One million (1,000,000) or one thousand thousand, is the natural number following 999,999 and preceding 1,000,001. The word is derived from the early Italian millione (milione in modern Italian), from mille, "thousand", plus the augmentative suffix -one.
In scientific notation, it is written as 1×106 or just 106. Physical quantities can also be expressed using the SI prefix mega, when dealing with SI units. For example, 1 megawatt equals 1,000,000 watts.
The meaning of the word "million" is common to the short scale and long scale numbering systems, unlike the larger numbers, which have different names in the two systems.
The million is sometimes used in the English language as a metaphor for a very large number, as in "Never in a million years" and "You're one in a million", or a hyperbole, as in "I've walked a million miles" and "You've asked the million-dollar question".
Read more about Million: Visualizing One Million, Selected 7-digit Numbers (1,000,000 – 9,999,999)
Famous quotes containing the word million:
“It is impossible for a stranger traveling through the United States to tell from the appearance of the people or the country whether he is in Toledo, Ohio, or Portland, Oregon. Ninety million Americans cut their hair in the same way, eat each morning exactly the same breakfast, tie up the small girls’ curls with precisely the same kind of ribbon fashioned into bows exactly alike; and in every way all try to look and act as much like all the others as they can.”
—Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe (1865–1922)
“Three million of such stones would be needed before the work was done. Three million stones of an average weight of 5,000 pounds, every stone cut precisely to fit into its destined place in the great pyramid. From the quarries they pulled the stones across the desert to the banks of the Nile. Never in the history of the world had so great a task been performed. Their faith gave them strength, and their joy gave them song.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“Frustrate a Frenchman, he will drink himself to death; an Irishman, he will die of angry hypertension; a Dane, he will shoot himself; an American, he will get drunk, shoot you, then establish a million dollar aid program for your relatives. Then he will die of an ulcer.”
—Stanley Rudin. The New York Times (August 22, 1963)