So, I’ve seen this “centibillionaire” title a few times, but I believe it should be hecto(a?)billionaire if I have my metric prefixes correct.
E.g. a centimeter is a hundredth of a meter, so a hundredth of a billion is 10mil.
Shout-out to [email protected]
Or maybe I’m out of the loop on the joke.
I totally would agree, except we’re using “billion [dollar]” and not “gigadollar”, so I think we’re already not using a metric term in the first place. It sounds to me like “billion” comes from Latin, and “cent-” as a Latin prefix would mean 100x, so my layman’s understanding is still satisfied with “centbillionaire”. Totally interested if I’m missing something, though.
Centi is divided by 100. Hecto is multiplied by 100.
That’s how it’s used with metric prefixes, but in other contexts you have to take into account the original meaning of the latin word. Centum means a hundred.
Centi still means one hundredth. https://images.app.goo.gl/PpoMdsfakk26179w7 You don’t know latin.
Centi is used in different ways, see centipeda, which means hundred-footed, not one hundredth of feet.
I do admit I’m not a native speaker.
