Centimillionaires: Elites with Investable Assets of More Than $100M | Hacker News Reader

Centimillionaires: Elites with Investable Assets of More Than $100M

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34 pointsDoreenMichele45 comments

The person who wrote this thought they'd be clever by using the SI prefix "centi", not realizing that it means one one-hundredth (as in "centimeter"). They should have used the prefix "hecto", which means one hundred.

I always admired how simple, yet clever the SI prefix scheme is: use Roman numerals for sub-units (centi-, mili-), and Greek numerals for multiplies (deka-, hecto-, kilo-). Although I guess a century ago average well educated person was much more familiar with Latin and Greek languages.

And in the same breath, century is not 1/100th of a year.

But century is not an SI unit :)

Well, neither is centimillionaire either

I get the impression centimillionaire was a term invented so that journalists could make up headlines and stories that might seem relevant or interesting.

Yes, century, not centiury.

If only. Deci- is from Latin, too, and both mega- and micro- derive from Greek.

Huh, I had no idea about this distinction - quite clever.

Phew, you helped me realize I have won at life and am also a centi-millionaire.

Sadly, there are many who cannot say the same because of their low net worth.

Maybe they are a milli-millionnaire?

then explain centipedes

1/100th of a pede

Pedes must be crazy, a million legs like that

It is because you are confusing an etymology (in 'centenary', 'centennial', 'centigrade'...) with a prefixing (in 'centimeter', 'centigram', 'centiliter'...).

Also confusingly juxtaposed with milli* like it's 1/100th of 1/1000th.

It can be used either way, e.g. the word "century" means 100 years.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/centi-

Update: looked into this more and the "centi" part of the SI system comes from the Latin word "centum" which means 100, not 1/100. Definitely seems either usage is acceptable.

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/centimeter

Maybe, but in Europe, you'll finish off your 33 or 50 centilitre beer in a sitting and possibly a few more.

Yes, Latin centum means 100; hence century, and the prefix centi was invented during the French Revolution, meaning 1/100 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centi-). For hecto-, they took inspiration from the free ἑκατόν (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hecto-)

(They did the same for 1000 and 1/1000, deriving milli from Latin millum and kilo from Greek χίλιοι, but used Latin for both deca- and deci-, and used Greek for both giga- and micro. So far for consistency)

I don’t see how it follows that either usage is acceptable.

That’s like saying risky and riskless can be used interchangeably because the both come from the word risk.

Edit: I don’t know why I even reached for an analogy, it’s exactly like saying hundred and hundredth are interchangeable.

No it's like saying biannual can mean twice a year or once every two years.

Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. Language evolves.

interesting. I always thought a centenarian was someone 100 years or older. now I know it's someone one-one-hundreth of a year old or older.

Not every word in the english language uses SI prefixes.

“Centi” is just Latin for hundred, as in centigrade or centipede, or centurion and century.

It’s a convention of the SI system that Latin prefixes are the fractional units, but that’s not a feature of the Latin words themselves.

I would have gone with decibillionaire

>The person who wrote this thought they'd be clever by using the SI prefix "centi", not realizing that it means one one-hundredth (as in "centimeter").

The "centimillionaire" to describe wealth of $100+ million has been used for many years before this thread's article. Here's an old newspaper article about Enron from 2003: https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/09/business/company-man-to-t...

>In one year, Mr. Lay has been transformed from a centimillionaire with huge stock holdings to a multimillionaire whose wealth is mostly tied up in hard-to-sell assets.

And some extra trivia... your "correction" and the followup replies is replaying Groundhog Day... e.g. 9 years ago : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8319279

On the upside, HN was smaller back then, so debate about the word was briefer.

I would say the rest of the content follows the quality trend the headline established.

is millionaire also incorrect?

'Million' is the augmentative of 'mille'. It is a modern adoption, not a classic term.

Haikus consist of

17,000 millions

by definition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_(Japanese_prosody)

I was about to counter with “centinarian” (is that a newborn?), but that’s actually spelled “centenarian”.

As HN articles go this one being here is puzzling. What value does this article provide to the HN audience?

Good place for 1%ers to argue with 10%ers while 0.1%ers look on and laugh /s

Bravo honestly

I'm the person who submitted it. I thought it was interesting in part because it talks about some of the cities with a significant number of such people.

I'm a demographic outlier with zero social connections via HN. No one on HN routinely emails me, chats with me on the social platform formerly known as Twitter, meets me for coffee in person, etc.

So the only feedback I have is upvotes, downvotes, flags and comments and that's frequently difficult to decifer.

I submit things I think are interesting and accept that most of what I submit will be roundly ignored. But then this seems true for most submissions, so it's not a strong signal (shrug).

I have no idea why this got upvoted enough to briefly make the front page.

Which of my submissions does well and which doesn't frequently baffles me. I no longer waste a lot of time trying to figure it out.

Fair enough. The wisdom of the crowd has spoken and the article was relevant to enough that it got to the front page for a blip.

My mapper mindset[1] can't let this pass. Corruption of the language like that creeps me out.

I've enjoyed the times I was a milli-millionaire in life, and I was a Centi-millionaire once when we paid for the house, but these days being a micro-millionaire is a treat.

[1] https://wiki.c2.com/?MappersVsPackers

Your house was $10,000-$99,999 and now having $1-$9 is a treat??

Yes to both.

A decade ago, we bought the cheapest house in a town with an awesome school district. Since then, prices have inflated. We were lucky.

In that decade our health declined, Long Covid took me out of the workforce. It's a luxury now to have even a few dollars that I don't have to spend on groceries. We're fortunate that we bought the cheapest house, instead of a nice house, or we'd be homeless.

... yet another site which displays ads if you hit "reject all" There should be a browser extension to automatically submit gdpr reports for such sites

Displaying ads has nothing to do with GDPR. They can still display ads that aren’t targeted, they just can’t save your information for more targeted advertising.

Frankly, it's an obscenity that these people can hold so much wealth when there are millions of people who have to live hand to mouth on a daily basis out there. People working for these multimillionaires made all the profit for them. They must pay more in taxes to spread the wealth. Trickledown economics simply doesn't work and increases inequality.

The poor are only poor because the education system makes them dumb. If you read the law in America, you would never have to worry about money but unfortunately people only know what the oxford fictionary teaches

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