Numeral, Metric and Binary Prefixes

Uni, Bi, Kilo, Mibi etc.

• Small Quantity Prefixes
  • IUPAC Names
• Metric and Binary Prefixes

Small Quantity Prefixes

IUPAC Names ¹

For higher multiples of 10, 100 and 1000:

• 30, 40, 50 etc: Add -conta- (tetraconta-, pentaconta-)
• 300, 400, 500 etc: Add -cta- (tricta-, tetracta-)
• 2000, 3000 etc: Add -lia- (hexalia-, hexalia-)

To build numbers, join prefixes for each digit (replace mono- with hen- and di- with do-)

For complex features, -kis- is added:

• 5 = pentakis-
• 421 = henicosatetractakis-
• Note mono- remains unchanged, di- becomes bis- and tri- becomes tris-

Metric and Binary Prefixes

When used to denote a number of bits/bytes (kilobyte, megabit, etc.), there is some ambiguity as whether these units refer to a multiple of , as above, or a multiple of . The IEC defines the following Binary Prefixes in an attempt to alleviate this issue, although adoption is ultimately implementation dependent.