The building blocks of English
Affixes
tera-
In units of measurement, a factor of 1012, a million million.
Greek teras, monster.
This is one of the standard SI (Système International) multiples (see the entryNumber words). It occurs in terms such as terahertz, a frequency of a million million cycles per second, and terawatt, a million million watts. In computing, it strictly has a sense of 240, but in terms such as terabyte it often means a million million bytes. The unit of computing speed, the teraflop, is always equal to one million million floating-point operations per second.
Support this website
This dictionary contains more than 1,250 entries, illustrated by some 10,000 examples, all defined and explained for your information and emjoyment.
There are no advertisements to interrupt your reading pleasure. I rely on your generosity to cover running costs. Donations made via PayPal are secure.