Millivolt

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A unit of electrical potential difference equal to one thousandth of a volt, used to measure small voltage variations in electronic circuits
2. One thousandth of a volt, a metric unit for quantifying low-level electrical potential differences in sensitive equipment
3. A metric unit of electromotive force or potential difference that represents 0.001 volts, commonly employed in electronics and medical instrumentation

Etymology: A millivolt is a thousandth of a volt, and its first half is an old counting word. "Milli-" comes from French, which took it from Latin "mille", meaning "thousand". The same Latin root sits behind "millennium" and "mile". The second half honours a person. "Volt" is derived from the Italian surname Volta, after the physicist Alessandro Volta. Pairing a Latin prefix with a unit named for a scientist is how the unit was built, so the word is a hybrid of a classical number and a name.

Synonyms: mV