late 14c., from Old French million (late 13c.), from Italian millione (now milione), literally "a great thousand," augmentative of mille "thousand," from Latin mille, which is of uncertain origin. Used mainly by mathematicians until 16c. India, with its love of large numbers, had names before 3c. for numbers well beyond a billion. The ancient Greeks had no name for a number greater than ten thousand, the Romans for none higher than a hundred thousand. "A million" in Latin would have been decies centena milia, literally "ten hundred thousand." Million to one as a type of "long odds" is attested from 1761. Related: Millions.
雙語例句
1. Three hundred million dollars will be nothing like enough.
3億美元遠遠不夠。
來自柯林斯例句
2. Albania is a small nation state of around 3 million people.
阿爾巴尼亞是一個大約有300萬人口的單一民族獨立國家。
來自柯林斯例句
3. The disease wiped out 40 million rabbits at a stroke.
該疾病一下子就使4,000萬只兔子喪命。
來自柯林斯例句
4. Somalia, pop. 7.9 million, income per head about ￡1.60 a week.
索馬里，人口790萬，人均收入大約每周1.60英鎊。
來自柯林斯例句
5. America imports about 190 million pounds of tea a year.