On: Y Combinator's chief startup whisperer is demoting himself

[chillingeffect]

What dictionary is that? Im American and even here we learned hecto means 100 in 1st grade.

Centi means 1/100th. (1) e.g. centifoot = 1/100th of a foot.

(1) https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/centi

[cshimmin → chillingeffect]

centifoot... You had centimeter right there! "Americans will do anything to avoid using the metric system" lol

[smcnally → cshimmin]

“American Football is a game of centiyards, not feet.” — Official Hand-egg rulebook

[eredengrin → cshimmin]

Yeah would've made way more sense. Either that or centigrade.

[runlaszlorun → cshimmin]

centipounds?

[lolinder → chillingeffect]

Hecto- is the Greek root for 100, centi- is the Latin root for 100.

The metric prefixes up to 1000 use Greek roots for the large prefixes (10^+n) and Latin for the small (10^-n), but there are also words that are derived directly from the respective Latin roots and therefore don't necessarily carry the metric system's fractional meaning.

Someone already linked to the definition of centimillionaire, but here are a few more:

* centipede (100 legs, not 1/100 of a leg)

* centenarian (100 years old, not 1/100 of a year old)

* millennium (1000 years, not 1/1000 of a year)

[brianfitz → chillingeffect]

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

[HPsquared → brianfitz]

Reminds me of how financial newspapers often use a small "m" when describing millions of something. "$500m", or even worse "500m USD"... The engineer in me says that's 50 cents!

[chillingeffect → brianfitz]

In-depth discussion in this topic:

https://xona.com/2006/12/17.html