Number & MeasureGreek → English
Kilogram
/ˈkɪləɡræm/noun
The SI base unit of mass.
The Greek roots
χίλιοι
khílioi
thousand
γράμμα
grámma
letter, small weight
Literally: “a thousand grams”
The story of the word
The metric system took its multiplying prefixes from Greek and its dividing ones from Latin, which is why kilogram sits beside centimetre and millilitre. France fixed kilogramme in law in 1795. Until 2019 the kilogram was the last SI unit still defined by a physical object, a platinum-iridium cylinder in a vault near Paris that had quietly been losing mass for a century.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → French → English
- First recorded
- 1797
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
kilometregramkilobytechiliad
In a sentence
Two kilograms of flour disappear here in about ten days.