Giga

Part of speech: adjective, noun

Definitions

1. A metric prefix indicating a billion as a multiplier signifies extreme magnitude or intensity and refers to a unit of data storage or processing equal to one billion bytes or operations
2. Representing a factor of one billion in metric terms, it conveys the idea of immense scale or power and denotes a computing unit equal to one billion bytes or processing cycles
3. A prefix in the metric system denoting one billion units; expressing something of very large size or degree

Etymology: The prefix comes from the Greek "gigas," meaning giant. In Greek myth, the Gigantes were huge offspring of Gaia, the earth, who fought the Olympian gods. The same Greek stem produced English "gigantic," which came through Latin "gigas" and "gigant-," so the prefix and that familiar adjective are close relatives. When the metric system needed a prefix for quantities of a billion, it drew on this Greek root, so a gigametre is a billion metres. The prefix thus carries the old sense of giant bigness into measurement. It sits alongside "mega," from Greek "megas," meaning great, which the system also uses for a million. Both prefixes were chosen from Greek, the language that supplied so much of the vocabulary of science.

Synonyms: billion, gigantic