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Hectobillionaire, “centi-“ means 1/100

• eesmith 3y ago
  "Centi-" as a prefix can mean 100, though metric use is more common. For example, "centipede" nominally means 100 feet, though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centipede https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centipede says "Despite the name, no centipede has exactly 100 pairs of legs; number of legs ranges from 15 pairs to 191 pairs, always an odd number." Centibillionaire is the obvious extension of centimillionaire, and "centimillionaire" has been around for a long time. https://archive.org/details/per_chicago-daily-tribune_the-chicago-daily-tribun_1883-01-19_42/page/n3/mode/2up?q=centimillionaire https://archive.org/details/per_chicago-daily-tribune_the-ch... shows a use in 1883, explicitly referencing $100,000,000 of Vanderbilt capital. (A Google Books search finds two other uses of centimillionaire in the 1800s.) Another old word using centi- to mean 100 is "centimillennium", for 100 thousand years. Here is an 1882 use: https://archive.org/details/loverinschartoft00love/page/36/mode/2up?q=centimillennium https://archive.org/details/loverinschartoft00love/page/36/m... and Wiktionary adds several more recent uses at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/centimillennium https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/centimillennium .