Centimillionaire

Part of speech: noun, adjective

Definitions

1. A person whose wealth amounts to one hundred million or more in currency such as dollars or pounds
2. Someone possessing assets worth a hundred million units of money or more, placing them among the extremely wealthy
3. An individual whose net worth reaches the level of one hundred million, a fortune far beyond that of ordinary millionaires

Etymology: Centimillionaire is a plain compound: "centi-", from Latin "centum" meaning "hundred", attached to "millionaire". Put together, it names someone worth a hundred million, or a hundred times a million, in money or property. The arithmetic is the whole logic of the word, and the joke is that a millionaire, once a rare and striking figure, becomes a mere starting point. The prefix does the work here. "Centi-" is a combining form that multiplies a unit by one hundred, the same element that appears in "century" and "centipede" and in the metric unit "centimetre". Attaching it to "millionaire" produces a new rank on the same scale: a millionaire is a hundredfold multiple of a thousand thousand, and a centimillionaire sits a further hundred times above that.