Number & MeasureGreek → English
Micron
/ˈmaɪkrɒn/noun
One millionth of a metre.
The Greek roots
μικρόν
mikrón
small thing
Literally: “a small one”
Follow a root:μικρόν1 word
The story of the word
The unit is named 'small', neuter of μικρός and nothing more. It was fixed as a millionth of a metre in the 1880s and used by microscopists for a century, until the General Conference on Weights and Measures struck it off the books in 1967 in favour of micrometre. Nobody in a chip fab or a wool auction has taken the slightest notice since.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1880s
Same family
microscopemicrobemicrocosmomicron
In a sentence
Merino this fine runs under seventeen microns.
The filter stops anything above half a micron.