Hectomillionaire or Centimillionaire

I felt the need to weigh in on this subject because I was recently chided by my scientifically literate son-in-law Kevin for using centimillionaire. According to International Standard units, a centimillionaire is a person worth $10,000, not $100 million, as Forbes (among other careless media outlets, including Wikipedia) would have you believe. Is a centimeter 100 meters? Even a school child knows that’s wrong. The correct term is Hectomillionaire.

Read an erudite and tightly argued discussion of the hecto vs. centi controversy written by Matthew Doucette or Jason Doucette. I couldn’t do better., but I did want to bring it your attention.

Comments

[Robert E. Malchman]

My problem is "bi-weekly." Is it something that happens twice a week, or every other week? My work-around is to refer to "semi-weekly" (like a paper I used to work on back in college) or "fortnightly," which happily doesn't come up too frequently, though it's how government employees get paid (I can still wax eloquent about the joys of the "three-check" month, which are more than once in a blue moon.)