kilo-

In units of measurement, a factor of a thousand.

Greek khilioi, thousand.

This is one of the standard SI (Système International) decimal prefixes (see the entry Number words). Examples are kilogram (sometimes also kilogramme), the SI unit of mass; kilometre, a distance of a thousand metres; kilowatt, one thousand watts of electrical power. In computing, the form is commonly (and confusingly) used to refer to 2¹⁰ or 1024 instead, as in kilobit, 1024 binary bits of data or memory, or kilobyte, 1024 bytes. See also chili‑.