The word is derived from the early Italian millione (milione in modern Italian), from mille, "thousand", plus the augmentative suffix -one.

[1] It is commonly abbreviated: In scientific notation, it is written as 1×106 or 106.

[9] Physical quantities can also be expressed using the SI prefix mega (M), when dealing with SI units; for example, 1 megawatt (1 MW) equals 1,000,000 watts.

The meaning of the word "million" is common to the short scale and long scale numbering systems, unlike the larger numbers, which have different names in the two systems.

Even though it is often stressed that counting to precisely a million would be an exceedingly tedious task due to the time and concentration required, there are many ways to bring the number "down to size" in approximate quantities, ignoring irregularities or packing effects.