mil

Pluralmils, mil

1. 1
   nouncolloquialabbreviationclipping

   Clipping of million.

   The contract was reportedly worth three mil.

   He figured he'd need at least two mil to buy out his partners.

   Note

   A separate word that only looks like the measurement terms: this mil is million cut short, and it almost always counts money. It follows a number or a dollar sign and keeps the same shape for any amount, as in a cool ten mil, a couple of mil, or $10 mil. The measuring senses, by contrast, readily take the plural mils.

2. 2
   nouncolloquialUSabbreviationclipping

   Clipping of milliliter.

   Each dose contains five mil of liquid.

   She measured out 30 mils of the solution.

   Note

   Here the word is milliliter cut back to its first syllable, one of several metric terms trimmed the same way. It turns up in spoken dosing instructions and takes the ordinary plural, as in ten mils of cough syrup. In writing, mL, ml or cc are the usual choices, and spelling out milliliter avoids confusion with the millimeter shortening.

3. 3
   nouncolloquialUSabbreviationclipping

   Clipping of millimeter.

   The bolt takes a ten mil socket, not a half-inch one.

   The drill bits in this set run from two mil up to ten.

   Note

   Small sizes and calibers are where this one shows up: bars 10 mils in diameter, or a 9 mil, a round named for its millimeter caliber, in Gupi's "kutna hora" (2025). The trouble is that 10 mils can also mean a hundredth of an inch in the thousandth-of-an-inch sense, so where precision matters the symbol mm is the safer choice.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A unit of length equal to one thousandth of an inch (25.4 micrometers), usually used for thin objects such as sheets of plastic.

   The drop cloth measures four mil, thick enough to resist punctures.

   Anti-corrosion coatings on the pipes were specified at three mil.

   Similarthou

   Note

   Thin plastic sheeting is the classic thing measured this way, and the word usually takes its plural before thick: 10 mils thick, 2.25 mils thick. The same amount is also called a thou. Watch the context, because the millimeter shortening is spelled identically and is nearly forty times larger, so 10 mils thick and 10 mils in diameter can describe very different objects.

5. 5
   adjectiveabbreviationclipping

   Clipping of military.

   The contractor supplies mil grade cabling to the navy.

   Collectors prize old mil radios from the war years.

   Note

   A third, unrelated origin: this mil is military clipped, and it behaves as an adjective rather than a unit. Like the full word, it is not comparable, since one thing cannot be more mil than another. Its range follows military's own meanings, covering what relates to the armed forces or to war.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A unit of angular measurement equal to ¹⁄₆₄₀₀ of a complete circle, spanning roughly one meter at a distance of 1000 meters.

   Artillery crews shifted their aim three mil to the right.

   A target one meter wide at 1000 meters covers about one mil.

   Note

   The name promises a thousandth, since it goes back to Latin millesimum, yet here the circle is cut into 6400 parts. Some countries divide it into 6000 or 6300 instead, so the unit is not the same angle everywhere. Its appeal is the rule of thumb: one mil spans about a meter at 1000 meters. The milliradian is close in size but is defined from the radian, not from the circle.

7. 7
   nouncolloquialabbreviationclipping

   Clipping of milliradian.

   Hold one mil low for the closer target.

   He adjusted his scope by four mils for elevation.

   Note

   Riflescopes carry this one in the compound mil-dot reticle, where each dot marks one mil, which works out to a few inches at 100 yards. Unlike the 6400-part angular mil, this unit is a strict thousandth of a radian. Two instruments that both read in mils may therefore not agree exactly, so it is worth knowing which mil a scale means.

8. 8
   nouncountable

   A former unit of currency equal to one thousandth of the Maltese lira.

   Her grandmother kept a single mil as a keepsake.

   Street vendors once quoted their prices in mils.

Showing meanings only. Show all 8