Million

Forms

Million f (genitive Million, plural Millionen, diminutive Milliönchen n)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Italian milione (“great thousand”), an augmentative with the suffix -one of mille (“thousand”), from Latin mīlle.^[2][3][4][5] The Italian word, at first without a fixed value, spread from the 13th century to Spanish, French, English and German.^[5][4] The same word is Dutch miljoen, English million, French million and Swedish miljon.^[2]

The early German records have no clear gender;^[6] the word became feminine under the influence of Zahl, as Pfeifer and the Grimms' dictionary explain, or by analogy with other numbers and nouns of the same ending, according to Wiktionary.^[3][6][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first German record is from a Nuremberg chronicle of 1448 (von hundert milion lifergelts), for a large sum of money without an exact value.^[5][6]

Semantic evolution

At first the word was used only of money, for very large sums otherwise counted in “tons”: ten tons of gold made a Million Goldes.^[5][6] In the 16th century it was not yet a common number word and the arithmetic books avoided it: Adam Riese (1574) names no number higher than hunderttausend and expresses 86 thousand million as sechs und achzig tausent tausent mal tausent.^[2][6] Only in the 17th century did it spread beyond money, and by the end of that century it had the fixed value 1,000,000;^[5][4] yet Zedler's encyclopedia (1739) still defines it as a sum of money.^[2]

The plural is used for a vast number, as in Schiller's Seid umschlungen, Millionen!.^[7] Millionär was formed at the end of the 18th century after French millionnaire,^[7][3] and Milliarde “a thousand million” came from French in the 18th century and became common with the French war indemnity of five Milliarden after 1871.^[3] Hungarian borrowed the word as milliom in 1640.^[8]

Timeline

• 1448 – milion appears in a Nuremberg chronicle.^[5]
• 1574 – Adam Riese still does without the word in his arithmetic.^[2]
• 1640 – Hungarian milliom is recorded.^[8]
• 1664 – viele Millionen Menschen: the word is used outside money.^[5]
• End of the 17th century – The value 1,000,000 is fixed.^[5]
• 1739 – Zedler's encyclopedia still treats it as a sum of money.^[2]
• End of the 18th century – Millionär is formed.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. A thousand times a thousand, 1,000,000: eine Million Euro.^[9][1]
2. (plural) An indefinite, very large number: Millionen von Zuschauern.^[9][10]
3. (plural) A sum of several million: der Umbau kostet Millionen.^[9]

Word family

• Millionär
• Milliarde

Related words

• Billion
• Meile
• Promille

Usage notes

The abbreviations are Mio. and Mill.^[9]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 623
3. ^ a b c d Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
4. ^ a b c Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2014), 5th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin / Mannheim / Zürich: Dudenverlag, p. 563
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Schulz, Hans; Basler, Otto, et al. (1913–1988), Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch, 7 vols., Strasbourg / Berlin: Trübner / De Gruyter; 2nd ed., ed. Gerhard Strauß et al. (1995–), Berlin / New York: De Gruyter; via OWID, Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache
6. ^ a b c d e Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 12, 2218
7. ^ a b c Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
8. ^ a b Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de
9. ^ a b c d Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
10. ^ Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org