Centimillionaires: Elites with Investable Assets of More Than $100M(investopedia.com)

34 pointsby DoreenMichele3 tahun yang lalu45 comments

Centimillionaires: Elites with Investable Assets of More Than $100M

https://www.investopedia.com/new-class-of-global-elite-have-emerged-8357556

50 comments

serevi3 tahun yang lalu

The person who wrote this thought they'd be clever by using the SI prefix "centi", not realizing that it means one one-hundredth (as in "centimeter"). They should have used the prefix "hecto", which means one hundred.

montalbano3 tahun yang lalu

It can be used either way, e.g. the word "century" means 100 years.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/centi-

Update: looked into this more and the "centi" part of the SI system comes from the Latin word "centum" which means 100, not 1/100. Definitely seems either usage is acceptable.

https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/centimeter

Someone3 tahun yang lalu

Yes, Latin centum means 100; hence century, and the prefix centi was invented during the French Revolution, meaning 1/100 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centi-). For hecto-, they took inspiration from the free ἑκατόν (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hecto-)

(They did the same for 1000 and 1/1000, deriving milli from Latin millum and kilo from Greek χίλιοι, but used Latin for both deca- and deci-, and used Greek for both giga- and micro. So far for consistency)

I don’t see how it follows that either usage is acceptable.

[deleted]3 tahun yang lalu

WrongAssumption3 tahun yang lalu

That’s like saying risky and riskless can be used interchangeably because the both come from the word risk.

Edit: I don’t know why I even reached for an analogy, it’s exactly like saying hundred and hundredth are interchangeable.

montalbano3 tahun yang lalu

No it's like saying biannual can mean twice a year or once every two years.

Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. Language evolves.

Scoundreller3 tahun yang lalu

Maybe, but in Europe, you'll finish off your 33 or 50 centilitre beer in a sitting and possibly a few more.

Detrytus3 tahun yang lalu

I always admired how simple, yet clever the SI prefix scheme is: use Roman numerals for sub-units (centi-, mili-), and Greek numerals for multiplies (deka-, hecto-, kilo-). Although I guess a century ago average well educated person was much more familiar with Latin and Greek languages.

pradn3 tahun yang lalu

Huh, I had no idea about this distinction - quite clever.

Someone3 tahun yang lalu

If only. Deci- is from Latin, too, and both mega- and micro- derive from Greek.

Brian_K_White3 tahun yang lalu

And in the same breath, century is not 1/100th of a year.

Detrytus3 tahun yang lalu

But century is not an SI unit :)

dmoy3 tahun yang lalu

Well, neither is centimillionaire either

cbsmith3 tahun yang lalu

I get the impression centimillionaire was a term invented so that journalists could make up headlines and stories that might seem relevant or interesting.

WrongAssumption3 tahun yang lalu

Yes, century, not centiury.

mensetmanusman3 tahun yang lalu

Phew, you helped me realize I have won at life and am also a centi-millionaire.

xwdv3 tahun yang lalu

Sadly, there are many who cannot say the same because of their low net worth.

layer83 tahun yang lalu

Maybe they are a milli-millionnaire?

varelse3 tahun yang lalu

zzzeek3 tahun yang lalu

then explain centipedes

alpark33 tahun yang lalu

1/100th of a pede

iancmceachern3 tahun yang lalu

Pedes must be crazy, a million legs like that

mdp20213 tahun yang lalu

It is because you are confusing an etymology (in 'centenary', 'centennial', 'centigrade'...) with a prefixing (in 'centimeter', 'centigram', 'centiliter'...).

[deleted]3 tahun yang lalu

karmakaze3 tahun yang lalu

Also confusingly juxtaposed with milli* like it's 1/100th of 1/1000th.

jjeaff3 tahun yang lalu

interesting. I always thought a centenarian was someone 100 years or older. now I know it's someone one-one-hundreth of a year old or older.

MichaelZuo3 tahun yang lalu

Not every word in the english language uses SI prefixes.

pavlov3 tahun yang lalu

“Centi” is just Latin for hundred, as in centigrade or centipede, or centurion and century.

It’s a convention of the SI system that Latin prefixes are the fractional units, but that’s not a feature of the Latin words themselves.

wombatpm3 tahun yang lalu

I would have gone with decibillionaire

jasode3 tahun yang lalu

>The person who wrote this thought they'd be clever by using the SI prefix "centi", not realizing that it means one one-hundredth (as in "centimeter").

The "centimillionaire" to describe wealth of $100+ million has been used for many years before this thread's article. Here's an old newspaper article about Enron from 2003: https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/09/business/company-man-to-t...

>In one year, Mr. Lay has been transformed from a centimillionaire with huge stock holdings to a multimillionaire whose wealth is mostly tied up in hard-to-sell assets.

And some extra trivia... your "correction" and the followup replies is replaying Groundhog Day... e.g. 9 years ago : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8319279

DoreenMichele3 tahun yang lalu

On the upside, HN was smaller back then, so debate about the word was briefer.

cbsmith3 tahun yang lalu

I would say the rest of the content follows the quality trend the headline established.

ryanar3 tahun yang lalu

is millionaire also incorrect?

layer83 tahun yang lalu

Haikus consist of

17,000 millions

by definition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_(Japanese_prosody)

mdp20213 tahun yang lalu

'Million' is the augmentative of 'mille'. It is a modern adoption, not a classic term.

[deleted]3 tahun yang lalu

layer83 tahun yang lalu

I was about to counter with “centinarian” (is that a newborn?), but that’s actually spelled “centenarian”.

[deleted]3 tahun yang lalu

gigatexal3 tahun yang lalu

As HN articles go this one being here is puzzling. What value does this article provide to the HN audience?

DoreenMichele3 tahun yang lalu

I'm the person who submitted it. I thought it was interesting in part because it talks about some of the cities with a significant number of such people.

I'm a demographic outlier with zero social connections via HN. No one on HN routinely emails me, chats with me on the social platform formerly known as Twitter, meets me for coffee in person, etc.

So the only feedback I have is upvotes, downvotes, flags and comments and that's frequently difficult to decifer.

I submit things I think are interesting and accept that most of what I submit will be roundly ignored. But then this seems true for most submissions, so it's not a strong signal (shrug).

I have no idea why this got upvoted enough to briefly make the front page.

Which of my submissions does well and which doesn't frequently baffles me. I no longer waste a lot of time trying to figure it out.

gigatexal3 tahun yang lalu

Fair enough. The wisdom of the crowd has spoken and the article was relevant to enough that it got to the front page for a blip.

seanp2k23 tahun yang lalu

Good place for 1%ers to argue with 10%ers while 0.1%ers look on and laugh /s

angrydev3 tahun yang lalu

Bravo honestly

mikewarot3 tahun yang lalu

NO

My mapper mindset[1] can't let this pass. Corruption of the language like that creeps me out.

I've enjoyed the times I was a milli-millionaire in life, and I was a Centi-millionaire once when we paid for the house, but these days being a micro-millionaire is a treat.

[1] https://wiki.c2.com/?MappersVsPackers

rowbin3 tahun yang lalu

Your house was $10,000-$99,999 and now having $1-$9 is a treat??

mikewarot3 tahun yang lalu

Yes to both.

A decade ago, we bought the cheapest house in a town with an awesome school district. Since then, prices have inflated. We were lucky.

In that decade our health declined, Long Covid took me out of the workforce. It's a luxury now to have even a few dollars that I don't have to spend on groceries. We're fortunate that we bought the cheapest house, instead of a nice house, or we'd be homeless.

lakomen3 tahun yang lalu

... yet another site which displays ads if you hit "reject all" There should be a browser extension to automatically submit gdpr reports for such sites

CodeSgt3 tahun yang lalu

Displaying ads has nothing to do with GDPR. They can still display ads that aren’t targeted, they just can’t save your information for more targeted advertising.

mrlonglong3 tahun yang lalu

Frankly, it's an obscenity that these people can hold so much wealth when there are millions of people who have to live hand to mouth on a daily basis out there. People working for these multimillionaires made all the profit for them. They must pay more in taxes to spread the wealth. Trickledown economics simply doesn't work and increases inequality.

shyn33 tahun yang lalu

The poor are only poor because the education system makes them dumb. If you read the law in America, you would never have to worry about money but unfortunately people only know what the oxford fictionary teaches