centimillion

English

Etymology

From centi- (“hundred”) +‎ million.

Numeral

centimillion (plural centimillions)

  1. Hundred million.
    Synonym: (rare) hectomillion
    • 1972, Béla W[illiam] von Block, Super-Detective: The Many Lives of Tom Ponzi, Europe’s Master Investigator, Chicago, Ill.: Playboy Press, →LCCN, page 168:
      [Youssef] Beidas was the founder and head of Intra Bank, a centimillion-dollar banking organization with main headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon, and branches just about everywhere, including the United States.
    • 1974, Allen Churchill, “The Terrifying Commodore”, in The Splendor Seekers: An Informal Glimpse of America’s Multimillionaire Spenders—Members of the $50,000,000 Club, New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →ISBN, pages 16–17:
      Over the next forty years—until the advent of a world war—the vast majority of the population might struggle to keep up with the Joneses. But for a fistful of Robber Barons with their centimillions the challenge was keeping up with the Vanderbilts.
    • 1985, Stan Lee [i.e., Stanley R. Lee], “The Conspirators”, in Dunn’s Conundrum, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Row, →ISBN, page 313:
      Davey Reed had always been impressed by Emerson Foster. Foster was smart and smooth and knew who he was, and he stayed concentrated on things; he set goals, little goals and big goals, and he pursued them until he reached them, the little ones and the big ones. Which was how he’d become a centimillionaire, none of it inherited. / But no. Reed was thinking, there had to be something more. Reed could concentrate and he set goals all the time, but he didn’t have a cent, much less a centimillion.
    • 2000, Dr. Dobb’s Journal, volume 25, →ISSN, page 145:
      If person i has M centimillion dollars, he will make the sum over j of nMij be 1 mod 21.

Usage notes

Proscribed by some in favor of the rare hectomillion (see hecto- (“hundred”)), as centi-, as a SI prefix, means “one-hundredth”;[1][2] however, centi- (from Latin centum (“hundred”)) has both meanings, “hundred” being the earlier one: see Category:English terms prefixed with centi- (hundred) (e.g., centipede).

Translations
one hundred million — see one hundred million

References
  1. Patricia Barnes-Svarney, ‎Thomas E. Svarney (2006) The Handy Math Answer Book: Your Smart Reference, Canton, Mich.: Visible Ink Press, →ISBN, page 52:
    Why is the word “centmillion” incorrect? / Centimillion is a word sometimes incorrectly used to mean 100 million (108). But the metric prefix “centi-” means 1/100, not 100. There are ways to name this number: 100 million could be called a hectomillion; in the United States, it could be called a decibillion.
  2. For example, this article originally used the more common centibillionaire, but was later changed: Mark Frauenfelder (2022 December 12) “Video of Elon Musk getting booed on stage at Dave Chappelle's show last night was removed from Twitter (here's a copy)”, in Boing Boing‎, archived from the original on 2022-12-15: “Dave Chappelle had a treat for attendees at his comedy show in San Francisco last night. He brought attention-starved hectobillionaire Elon Musk on stage.”
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