The people behind centibillionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are largely unknown to the public. However, two journalists recently found a public Google Calendar for one DOGE staffer that sheds light on how the quasi-agency operates.Business Insider's...
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 !anythingbutmetric@discuss.tchncs.de
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.
In the roman context, a single centurion would be 1/100 of an army grouping.
But since we aren’t living in roman times, one cent is 1/100 of a dollar.
Language is inconsistent in it’s usage of cent, so at best the term centibillionaire is confusing. Hectobillionaire has only one possible meaning, so if we’re inventing new words, probably should go with the option that’s more precise.
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.
Century, centennial, centipede, etc.
https://images.app.goo.gl/PpoMdsfakk26179w7
Yes, that’s how the Metric prefixes work, that’s already established. This is about other contexts where it can go either way.
But 1 percent is 1 per 100.
Decitrillionaire
But 1 percent is 1 per 100.