Milligramme

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A measurement of mass that is one thousandth of a gram is used to express very small quantities
2. This unit denotes a mass equal to one thousandth of a gram in scientific usage
3. A metric unit representing one one-thousandth the weight of a gram

Etymology: The metric system that gave us this unit was built in revolutionary France in the 1790s, and its vocabulary was assembled from a deliberate toolkit of prefixes. "Milli-" comes from Latin "mille," meaning thousand, so a milligram is one thousandth of a gram. "Gram" itself traces back through Late Latin "gramma" to Greek "gramma," a small weight, which is also the source of the familiar word for a written letter. The spelling "milligramme," with its final "-me," is the French form, and English borrowed the word from French. Those who prefer the double-m ending today are keeping the older convention, while the single-m "milligram" has become the standard form in English. Both spellings name the same unit, and the word's structure is simply a prefix attached to a base word.

Synonyms: milligram