Calibrate may trace to an Arabic shoemaker's mold — a word for standard form that became gun bore diameter, then precision measurement, then a metaphor for human quality.
To mark or adjust a measuring instrument so it gives accurate readings. To carefully assess or determine the correct value or response.
From caliber/calibre (the internal diameter of a gun barrel or tube) + -ate (verb suffix). Caliber from French calibre, from Italian calibro, possibly from Arabic qālib (mold, last for shoes) or from Greek kalopodion (shoemaker's last), diminutive of kalopous (wooden foot) Key roots: qālib (Arabic: "mold, form, pattern"), calibre (French: "bore diameter, standard of quality").
Calibrate likely traces to an Arabic word for a shoemaker's mold (qālib) — the form that gives a shoe its shape. From this idea of a standard form came the concept of a gun barrel's bore diameter (caliber), and from measuring bore diameters came the general concept of precise measurement (calibration). The figurative use — "calibrating your response" — treats human judgment as a precision instrument. The phrase "a person of high caliber" uses the gun-barrel