milione

Forms

milione m (plural milioni)^[2][3] Older and popular forms are millione and miglione.^[1][4]

Etymology

It is formed from Italian mille + -one, with the augmentative suffix: a “big thousand”.^[5][3][1][4] Nocentini takes it as the augmentative of Old Italian milia (“thousand”), from Latin mīlia, the plural of mīlle (“thousand”), and Devoto–Oli and Sabatini–Coletti also start from the Latin plural.^[6][2][7] According to Nocentini the Italian word gave French million, which passed into English, and Spanish millón.^[6] Devoto, on the other hand, derived the Italian word from the French one, DIFIT dates Old French millon to 1266, before the first Italian record, and the TLIO derives one of its Old Italian nouns from Old French million.^[8][9][10]

De Vaan gives the generally accepted reconstruction of Latin mīlle as Proto-Indo-European *sm-ih₂-ǵʰes-l-ih₂ (“one thousand”), a phrase of “one” and a word for “heap”, compared with the Indo-Iranian and Greek words for “thousand”.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in the Venetian Paolino Minorita (1313–1315), and DELI's is a sonnet of Pietro de' Faitinelli of 1315, with “e gente paladina un milione” (and a million paladin people), already in the loose sense “a great many”.^[10][5][3] Migliorini, quoted by DELI, linked the new word to the wider horizons that trade opened in the 14th century: about 1330 Iacopo d'Acqui still had to explain it in Latin as a thousand times a thousand pounds, and Giovanni Villani added that “ogni milione è mille migliaia di fiorini d'oro” (each million is a thousand thousands of gold florins).^[5]

Semantic evolution

Villani also uses the word alone for a sum of money, and the exact number and the hyperbolic “huge quantity” lived side by side from the start.^[5][10] Tommaseo noted that Florentines said milione with one ⟨l⟩ but millionario with two.^[12] Milionario “millionaire” follows French millionnaire (1740); DELI and Migliorini tie it to the inflation that followed John Law's financial schemes in France, and Antonio Genovesi used it in 1765 for those “called millionaires in the time of the Paris system”.^[5][13] The ordinal milionesimo dates from the 15th century.^[6]

In the 20th century milione was used on its own for a million lire, and now also for a million euros.^[3][4] The word spread to many languages: German Million is recorded from 1448, and Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Hungarian and Russian, among others, have borrowed it.^[9][1]

Timeline

• 1266 – French millon is recorded.^[9]
• 1313–1315 – Paolino Minorita uses milione.^[10]
• 1315 – Pietro de' Faitinelli writes un milione for a great many people.^[5]
• Before 1348 – Giovanni Villani explains the word and uses it for a sum of money.^[5]
• 1448 – German Million is recorded.^[9]
• 1765 – Antonio Genovesi uses milionario.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A million, a thousand thousands (1,000,000): Il ponte è costato tre milioni di euro.^{[3][2][7][14]}
2. Used alone, a million units of money (once lire, now euros): Dicono che abbia ereditato due milioni dallo zio.^[3][2][4]
3. (hyperbolic) A huge number: In spiaggia c'era un milione di persone.^[3][7][14]

Word family

• milionario
• milionesimo
• milioncino

Related words

• mille
• miglio
• French million

Usage notes

Like other number nouns it takes di before what it counts: un milione di stelle.^[14][3] Set phrases include a milioni “in great numbers” and nemmeno per un milione! “not for anything!”.^[3][2][14]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
4. ^ a b c d Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ a b c Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
7. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
8. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
9. ^ a b c d Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
10. ^ a b c d Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
13. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 663
14. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli