The building blocks of English

Affixes

hect(o)-

Also hekto‑.

One hundred.

French; an irregular contraction of the Greek hekaton, hundred.

This is one of the standard SI (Système International) decimal prefixes (see the entry Number words) and appears in such terms as hectolitre and hectometre. One hectare is one hundred ares (an area ten metres square, inconveniently small for land measurement); the associated noun is hectarage, equivalent to acreage. The spelling hekto‑ is now rare.

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