mega-
pref.（前缀）
语源
pref.（前缀）
- Large:
大：
megadose.
大剂量 - One million (106):
一百万（106）：
megahertz.
百万赫兹
语源
- Greek
希腊语 - from megas [great] * see meg-
源自 megas [大] *参见 meg-
mega-
combining form
denoting 106 ⇒
megawattM
(in computer technology) denoting 220 (1 048 576)
⇒
megabyte
large or great
⇒
megalith
informal. great in importance or amount
⇒
megastar
Origin
from Greek megas huge, powerfulmega-
Word Origin
1
variant of megalo- (megalith); also the initial element in units of measure that are equal to one million of the units denoted by the base word (megahertz). Symbol: M.
Also, especially before a vowel, meg-.
Origin
combining form representing Greek mégas large, great
Related Words
- flops
- hypermegasoma
- megabit
- megabuck
- megabyte
- megacephalic
mega-1. a prefix denoting 106 of a given unit, as in megawatt. Symbol: M
2. a prefix meaning 'great', 'huge', as in megalith.
3. a prefix meaning 'extremely', used as a combining form with adjectives, as in megatrendy.
4. a prefix meaning 'large', used as a combining form with nouns, as in megaresort, megashow, megahospital.
Also, (before vowels), meg-. [Greek, combining form of megas]
mega-
combining form
or meg-
a. great : large
megaspore
b. greatly surpassing others of its kind
megahit
2. million (106)
megohm
megacycle
combining form
or meg-
ETYMOLOGY Greek, from megas large — more at much
1.a. great : large
megaspore
b. greatly surpassing others of its kind
megahit
2. million (106)
megohm
megacycle
mega-
combining form
1.
- large表示“巨大的”：
-
megalith.
2.
- (in units of measurement) denoting a factor of one million (106)［用于计量单位］表示“兆”, “百万”：
-
megahertz
megadeath.
3.
- Computing denoting a factor of 220【计算机】表示“兆”。
词源
from Greek megas 'great'.
1883 MacAlister tr. Ziegler'sPath. Anat. i. §185. 265According to size we may distinguish them as micrococci, mesococci, and *megacocci, and microbacteria, mesobacteria, and *megabacteria.
1968 Harper's Mag. Feb. 61The noisy, ugly, chaotic, increasingly dangerous and ever-spreading *mega-cities.
1975 N.Y. Times 20 Aug. 37/2Or, as the Mailer-Breslin platform said, ‘New York will become the first insane asylum of the megacity.’
1906 Dorland Med. Dict. (ed. 4) 419/2*Megacolon.
1908 Practitioner Sept. 459 True congenital idiopathic megacolon, or Hirschsprung's disease.
1949 , etc. Megacolon . [ see Hirschsprung]
1895 Naturalist 260 Drawings made with the camera lucida..of the conjugating process showing the *megafrustules.
1891 Hartog in Nature 17 Sept. 484The smaller (micro-)gamete is male, the larger *(mega-)gamete, female.
1897 Parker & Haswell Text-bk. Zool. I. 71Union always taking place between a large cell or megagamete and a small cell or microgamete.
1890 W. H. Howell in Jrnl. Morphol. IV. 118,I shall speak of them hereafter as *megakaryocytes, or large nucleated giant cells.
1938 H. Downey Handbk. Hematol. I. vii. 449 (heading)Blood platelets and megacaryocytes.
1966 Lancet 24 Dec. 1416/1 There was virtual absence of erythroid precursors in the bone-marrow, with normal myeloid series and megakaryocytes.
1938 H. Downey Handbk. Hematol. I. vii. 482Many of the blood platelets of the peripheral blood were rather large *megacaryocytic fragments.
Ibid. ,Wuyts produced a marked megacaryocytic reaction in rabbits.
1972 Nature 7 Apr. 293/3 Erythroid, granulocytic or megakaryocytic cells.
1877 W. Turner Hum.Anat. ii. 869So large and persistent is the sac of the allantois in the ordinary Ruminantia , that M. H. Milne-Edwards has grouped them together as *Megallantoids. [ etc.]
1967 L. Mumford Myth of Machine i. 12Cosmic order was the basis of this new human order. The exactitude in measurement, the abstract mechanical system, the compulsive regularity of this ‘*megamachine’, as I shall call it, sprang directly from astronomical observations and scientific calculations.
1967 Harper's Mag. Oct. 110The mega⁓machine was ‘invisible’ because its tens of thousands of interacting parts were human.
1970 L. Mumford in New Yorker 31 Oct. 85What is needed to save mankind from the megamachine—or whatever controls the megamachine—is to displace the mechanical world picture with an organic world picture, in the center of which stands man himself.
1973 Physics Bull. Jan. 5/2The sophisticated industrial megamachines of the present century are also based on system centred technology, and the troubles they have led us into are only too clear.
1968 Time 8 Mar. 21 Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, 59, a *megamillionaire via the Rockefellers, a political patrician through the Aldriches.
1973 Observer 12 Aug. 11/1 He has managed to reach the near top of the mega-millionaire league table.
1897 Parker & Haswell Text-bk. Zool. I. 84The *meganucleus in Paramœcium is ovoid.
1903 S. J. Hickson in E. R. Lankester Zool. i. Protozoa 372The Meganucleus ( = Macronucleus).
1904 Science 21 Oct. 529/1 The pteridophytes..may be disposed according to the prevalent size of their leaves in a series, leading from microphyllous to *megaphyllous types.
1909 D. H. Scott in A. C. Seward Darwin &Mod. Sci. 203A large proportion of the higher plants are microphyllous in comparison with the highly megaphyllous fern-like forms from which they appear to have been derived.
1953 L. M. J. U. van Straaten in Geol. en Mijnbouw XV. 3/1Initial stages of transverse *megaripples covered with the common small scale current ripples are frequently seen on the large, sandy tidal flats.
1968 New Scientist 18 Apr. 113/1 The strange features that have come to be known as megaripples—regularly formed giant undulations, measured by echo sounders, that straddle the ocean floor with distances of three to four miles between crest and crest.
1954 S. W. Carey in NewsBull. Geol. Soc. Austral. July 1The known *megashears, where orogens are displaced hundreds of km., were next examined.
1971 Nature 2 July 23/1 We regard these two plates as distinct entities separated mainly by the Cayman-Puerto Rico megashear. [ American]
1889 Bennett & Murray Cryptog.Bot. 11It is a *megasporange or a microsporange, according as it contains megaspores or microspores. [ i.e. a spore-case]
1886 Athenæum 10 Apr. 491/2 Mr. Bennett has made use of the term *Megasporangia in describing the heterosporous vascular cryptogams.
1858 Carpenter Veg. Phys. §734Three or four roundish fleshy bodies (*megaspores).
1889 Bennett & Murray Cryptog.Bot. 11Two different kinds of spore,..megaspores and..microspores.
1900 Jrnl. R.Microsc. Soc. 605The division of the megaspore of Erythronium is..essentially the same as in Lilium philadelphicum.
1965 K. Esau PlantAnat. (ed. 2) xviii. 563The ovule developing from the placenta of the ovary is the seat of formation of the megaspores (or macrospores).
1902 Encycl. Brit. XXV. 432/2The microsporophylls (stamens) and the *megasporophylls (carpels).
1967 L. Mumford Myth of Machine ix. 189When all the components, political and economic, military, bureaucratic and royal, must be included, I shall usually refer to the ‘megamachine’: in plain words, the Big Machine. And the technical equipment derived from such a megamachine thence becomes ‘*mega⁓technics’... At its inception no inferior chief could organize the megamachine and set it in motion.
1967 Harper's Mag. Oct. 108Under the impulsion of unprecedented ‘mega⁓technics’—‘nuclear energy, supersonic transportation, cybernetic intelligence, and instantaneous distant communication’—the far-flung settlement patterns of Megalopolis are resistlessly expanding in many parts of the world, transforming man and the earth.
1970 New Yorker 10 Oct. 76/2 The idea of universal mechanization (mega⁓technics) was established in the megamachine of Egypt.
1970 L. Pauling Vitamin C & Common Cold 70The use of very large amounts of vitamins in the control of disease has been called *megavitamin therapy. Megavitamin therapy is one aspect of orthomolecular medicine. It is my opinion that in the course of time it will be found possible to control hundreds of diseases by megavitamin therapy.
1972 Daily Colonist (Victoria, B.C. ) 20 Feb. 19/2Dr. Abram Hoffer, a Saskatchewan psychiatrist who pioneered megavitamin therapy for schizophrenia.
1975 Nature 14 Aug. 529/3 Efforts of the FDA to regulate megavitamin promotion, however, were set back by a court decision and by the passage last year of a bill in the US Senate that specifically prevents the FDA from classifying high-potency vitamin preparations as drugs.
1889 Bennett & Murray Cryptog.Bot. 297Fig. 260..C. *megazoosporange..D. *megazoospores.
1903 Richards & Stull New Method determining Compressibility 43The pressure of a megadyne per square centimeter would be called a *megabar.
1925 J. Joly Surface-Hist. Earth iii. 55The megabar is one million dynes per sq. cm. It is nearly one atmosphere.
1969 New Scientist 9 Jan. 81/3 The pressure needed to produce metallic hydrogen may well be less than a megabar.
1957 Electronics 1 Oct. 163 (heading) High-speed computer stores 2·5 *megabits.
1972 Sci. Amer. Sept. 139/2A broadcast-quality color-television signal in digital code calls for 90 megabits per second.
1946 Picture Post 7 Dec. 10/1 Atomic research is so expensive that American scientists have ceased to use the dollar as their unit. They have laughingly coined the term ‘*megabuck’—one megabuck equals a million dollars.
1952 Galaxy June 16/2, I had already pencilled in a tentative campaign in the budget well under a megabuck.
1968 Amer. Anthropologist LXX. 608/2He certainly had no megabuck research grant.
1973 Nature 12 Jan. 86/1 The diamond project was not cheap (I think I first heard the word ‘megabuck’ in connexion with diamond synthesis).
1973 *Megabyte . [ see kilobytes.v. kilo- b]
1958 Tuscaloosa (Alabama) News 4 Sept. 4/5 The eeriest new word coined in the space age is ‘*Mega⁓corpse’.
1968 Economist 13 Apr. 29/2 Dr. Kahn, a controversial figure best known for his calculations on thermo-nuclear war and his invention of the term ‘megacorpse’, has begun to broaden the institute's scope.
1947 Radiology XLIX. 326/1 The amount of radioactivity from these fission products with moderately long half-lives was in the range of hundreds of *megacuries.
1957 New Scientist 10 Oct. 28/3 Large amounts of radioactivity can be measured in megacuries: one megacurie is the equivalent of one ton of radium. [ metric]
1960 New Biol. XXXI. 121The weight of 1 per cent of the particle is 1·2 Md. [ sc. T2 phage] Md [ Note] = *megadaltons or 1,000,000 molecular weight units.
1973 Sci. Amer. Apr. 22/2The molecular weight of the E. coli chromosome is 2,500 megadaltons.
1953 Birmingham (Alabama) News 21 June E3/1 He does not deal in numbers of atomic bombs or precise methods of delivery, in kilotons or *megadeaths.
1959 New Statesman 21 Nov. 693/3 Mr Krushchev's announcement that a single Soviet factory is producing 250 megadeath weapons a year is a timely reminder of the risks of delay.
1962 R. E. Lapp Kill & Overkill viii. 100‘55 megadeaths’ does not sound as bad as 55 million Americans dead.
1971 Islander (Victoria, B.C. ) 5 Dec. 15/4The brain that was good enough to produce the skilled hunter was also good enough to produce huge empires, noble causes to die for, vast armies, and megadeath.
1871 Brit. Assoc. Rep. ii. 29The author proposed..that the names kilodyne, *megadyne, kilopone, *megapone be employed to denote a thousand and a million dynes and pones. [ Everett]
1891 L. Clark Dict. Metric.Meas. ,*Meg-erg, or Megalerg = one million ergs... Meg-joule= one million joules.
1868 L. Clark Electr. Meas. 44*Megafarad.
1941 Chem. Abstr. XXXV. 2159 (heading)Molecular changes following irradiation with hertzian waves of a frequency of 1875 *megahertz.
1966 Electronics 3 Oct. 171 Transatlantic airliners will communicate with the satellite on the 118 to 136 Megahertz band.
1971 D. W. Sciama Mod. Cosmol. iv. 52The revised 3C catalogue gives a virtually complete list of the sources between declinations -5° and +90° that are brighter than 9 flux units at 178 megahertz. [ radio]
1892 B. Smith & Hudson Arith. 147A million joules make a *megajoule.
1902 Encycl. Brit. XXXIII. 812/1*Megametre (astronomy)..1,000,000 metres.
1970 Sci. Jrnl. June 16/1It is possible to transform maraging steels with a high content of embrittling components..into fine wire having a tensile strength of about 5200 *meganewtons per square metre.
1975 Physics Bull. Apr. 165/1Traditionally, standard forces up to meganewtons are produced on deadweight machines.
1933 Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. XIX. 1001At the distance of three *megaparsecs, the largest galaxies in the Virgo group have linear diameters of approximately six kiloparsecs.
1938 , etc. Megaparsec . [ see Hubble]
1973 Physics Bull. Nov. 674/1There is evidence for an intergalactic field of order 10-13 T which seems to be uniform over scales of several thousand megaparsecs. [ magnetic]
1958 Times Rev. Industry July 25/3For many applications the *megarad (one million rads) is more suitable.
1960 A. Charlesby Atomic Radiation & Polymers iv. 65A reactor running at 100 megawatts power output could provide 30 megarads to 1 ton of material.
1953 Economist 31 Jan. 307/2 During last summer, British production fell below the 1951 weekly average of 1,216,000 *mega units. [ of penicillin]
1970 New Scientist 19 Mar. 543/1, 2.4 megaunits of long acting benzathine penicillin can maintain a treponemicidal blood and tissue level for three weeks or more.
1868 L. Clark Electr. Meas. 43*Megavolt.
1924 C. R. Underhill Magnets i. 11The volt per microcoulomb or the megavolt per coulomb.
1957 Technology July 181/1 A research physicist at work on the 450 megavolt synchro-cyclotron.
1961 Lancet 16 Sept. 616/2, 3 patients with a recurrent infiltrating neoplasm after *megavoltage therapy were included.
1961 D. W. Smithers in Tanner & Smithers Tumours Oesophagus xxi. 265The next step forward came with the introduction of megavoltage apparatus. [ X-ray]
1900 Webster, *Megawatt.
1955 Times 16 July 6/4 The first atomic stations of the Central Electricity Authority will have two nuclear reactors each, together providing a net output of electricity of 100 to 200 megawatts.
1969 P. W. McDaniel in D. Z. Robinson et al. Nucl. Energy Today & Tomorrow (1971) ii. iv. 210In 1962 the largest U.S. power reactor was 180 megawatts.
1868 L. Clark Electr. Meas. 43One million ohms = 1 *megohm.
1902 Encycl. Brit. XXVIII. 4/2Convenient multiples and subdivisions of the ohm are the microhm and the megohm.
1932 Proc. Linn. Soc. CXLV. 26There is an early differentiation between..the simple microphylls and the branch systems or ‘telomes’ which later evolved into the *megaphylls of the higher plants.
1983 E. C. Minkoff EvolutionaryBiol. xxvi. 451/1Megaphylls of this type occur in ferns, where they bear the sporangia on their lower surfaces.
1989 Plant Systematics & Evol. CLXV. 147It is striking that there is nothing particularly primitive or pre-fern about these plants, they have all the assets of modern Filicalean ferns with bilaterally organized megaphylls and biseriate pinnae.
1982 Times 14 May 15/4 By then also more than 30 so-called *megastores, factory stores, are expected to be established. [ or]
1985 Investors Chron. 1–7 Nov. 42/1Virgin and HMV have set up megastores.
1991 Bicycling Feb. 50/2 Though many of these shops have provided character and expertise,..they'll..be replaced by megastores featuring slick merchandising and one-stop shopping.
mega-
before vowels meg-, word-forming element often meaning "large, great," but in precise scientific language "one million" (megaton, megawatt, etc.), from Greek megas "great, large, vast, big, high, tall; mighty, important" (fem. megale), from PIE *meg- "great" (cognates: Latin magnus, Old English micel; see mickle). Mega began to be used alone as an adjective by 1982.
High-speed computer stores 2.5 megabits [headline in "Electronics" magazine, Oct. 1, 1957]
ORIGIN: Greek , combining form of megas great. Cf. megalo-
mega-
combining form.
large: Megaspore = large spore.
one million: Megacycle = one million cycles. Megaton = one million tons.
Also, meg- before vowels.
[< Greek mégas great]
mega-
I.combining form
or meg-
Etymology: Greek, from megas large, great, strong — more at much
1.
a. : great : large
< megabacterium >
< megaspore >
: powerful
< megascope >
: of the major order
< megadiastrophism >
< megamutation >
: enlarged
< megatype >
or abnormally enlarged
< megaduodenum >
< megaesophagus >
b. : having a (specified) part of large size
< megadont >
< megagnathous >
c. : capable of being distinguished or identified without the aid of the microscope
< megabreccia >
< megafossil >
< megaphenocryst >
2. : a million of : multiplied by one million
< megohm >
< megalumen >
< megampere >
II.combining form
1. : greatly surpassing others of its kind
< megahero >
< megapolluters >
2. : to a superlative degree
< mega-successful >
I.
or meg-
1.
a.
< megabacterium >
< megaspore >
: powerful
< megascope >
: of the major order
< megadiastrophism >
< megamutation >
: enlarged
< megatype >
or abnormally enlarged
< megaduodenum >
< megaesophagus >
b.
< megadont >
< megagnathous >
c.
< megabreccia >
< megafossil >
< megaphenocryst >
2.
< megohm >
< megalumen >
< megampere >
II.
1.
< megahero >
< megapolluters >
2.
< mega-successful >
mega-
Etymology
From Ancient Greek μέγας (mégas, “great, large, mighty”), from Proto-Indo-European *meǵh₂s (“great”). Cognate with Latin magnus, Sanskrit मह (maha, “great, massive, large-scale, epic”), and with Germanic words: Gothic 𐌼𐌹𐌺𐌹𐌻𐍃 (mikils), Old English micel, Middle English muchel, English much, Old High German mihhil, Old Norse mikill, Danish meget.
Prefix
| SI prefix | ||
| M | ||
| Previous: | kilo- | |
| Next: | giga- | |
- (originally) Very large, great. Denoting a size larger than usual.
- In the International System of Units and other metric systems of units, multiplying the unit to which it is attached by one million (106.) SI Symbol: M.
- (computing) Multiplying the unit to which it is attached by 220 (= 1,048,576, the binary round number closest to a million). Computing symbol: Mi.
- (computing, marketing) Multiplying the unit to which it is attached by 210 × 103 (= 1024,000, the binary round number closest to thousand).
Usage notes
Synonyms
Antonyms
Derived terms
English words prefixed with mega-