the.com/kilo
The prefix that made science metric, and drug deals surprisingly decimal.
means A prefix meaning one thousand, used to scale up any unit it's attached to — kilogram, kilometer, kilowatt.
from From Greek 'khilioi' meaning 'thousand.' French scientists grabbed it in the 1790s when building the metric system, pairing Greek prefixes for multiples (kilo-, mega-) with Latin ones for fractions (deci-, centi-). The slang use for a kilogram of drugs — 'moving a kilo' — came later, riding on the word's association with weight.
- origin
- Greek chilioi, meaning a thousand
- redefined
- since 2019, fixed by Planck's constant, not a metal cylinder
- old standard
- a physical platinum-iridium block in Paris
- slang use
- street shorthand for one thousand dollars or a kilogram