Million (M)

General & non-SICurrent unit

One million (10⁶).

1 million = 1,000,000 pieces (exactly).

1 million = 1,000,000 pieces

About the million

Million comes from Italian. Old Italian milione was built from mille, a thousand, plus an augmentative ending, so it began as something like a big thousand. The name proved useful as a stem: by 1475 the French mathematician Jehan Adam was already building larger names from it, bymillion and trimillion, for 10¹² and 10¹⁸. The short and long scales agree on the million itself, 1,000,000 or 10⁶, and diverge only for the larger names. The SI prefix mega- stands for 10⁶.

Millions are hard to feel. Counting out a million items one by one is famously laborious, yet a million seconds lasts only about 11.57 days. A billion seconds, by contrast, is roughly 31.7 years.

Sources: Wikipedia: Million; Wikipedia: Names of large numbers; BIPM SI Brochure, 9th edition (2019)

Million conversion chart

1 million expressed in every other counting & quantity unit:

Unit1 million
Pieces1,000,000
Dozens83,333.33333
Lakhs10
Crores0.1
Billions (short Scale)0.001
Pairs500,000
Hundred10,000
Gross6,944.444444
Thousand1,000
Trillions (short Scale)0.000001
Score50,000
Half Dozens166,666.6667
Quadrillions1×10⁻⁹
Reams2,000
Moles1.660539067×10⁻¹⁸
Baker's Dozens76,923.07692
Small Gross8,333.333333
Great Gross578.7037037
Myriads100
Yi / Oku0.01
Arab (Indian)0.001
Kharab (Indian)0.00001
Billions (long Scale)0.000001
Quires40,000

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