The dictionary suggests this means they have $100 million. Likewise centibillionaire means $100 billion.

What dictionary is that? Im American and even here we learned hecto means 100 in 1st grade.

Centi means 1/100th. (1) e.g. centifoot = 1/100th of a foot.

(1) https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/centi

centifoot... You had centimeter right there! "Americans will do anything to avoid using the metric system" lol

“American Football is a game of centiyards, not feet.” — Official Hand-egg rulebook

Yeah would've made way more sense. Either that or centigrade.

centipounds?

Hecto- is the Greek root for 100, centi- is the Latin root for 100.

The metric prefixes up to 1000 use Greek roots for the large prefixes (10^+n) and Latin for the small (10^-n), but there are also words that are derived directly from the respective Latin roots and therefore don't necessarily carry the metric system's fractional meaning.

Someone already linked to the definition of centimillionaire, but here are a few more:

* centipede (100 legs, not 1/100 of a leg)

* centenarian (100 years old, not 1/100 of a year old)

* millennium (1000 years, not 1/1000 of a year)

Reminds me of how financial newspapers often use a small "m" when describing millions of something. "$500m", or even worse "500m USD"... The engineer in me says that's 50 cents!

In-depth discussion in this topic:

https://xona.com/2006/12/17.html

Centiliter = 0.01L

Hectoliter = 100 L

Centennial = 100 years

Centurion = Commander of 100 legionaries

You: logic

The English language: "allow me to introduce myself!"

Centipede = 100 legs

Etymology is more complicated than "look up the prefix in the metric system tables", and OP is correct about the definition of centimillionaire.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/centimillionaire

Centipede is Entomology

Brilliant, I laughed out loud

I know it is a word people use, and "centi-" is ambiguous without no context, but it's extremely unambiguous in the context of units of measure, and the word "hundred-millionaire" already existed and had the same number of syllables, so it's a really awkward choice.