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Comment by serevi | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

>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.

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?

“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.

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

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

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

I would have gone with decibillionaire

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.

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)

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'...).

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