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"Mil" as unit of measurement

epigene

epigene

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Hi everyone!

I finally got a question to ask both British and American native speakers... 😌

In a report on stock listing in Hong Kong compared with UK, Singapore and Australia, there is a table showing listing fees as percentage of funds raised.

The monetary unit used in the table is HK$ mil
At first glance, I assumed that the term "mil" is abbreviation for million (i.e., __ million Hong Kong dollars), but is "mil" a unit that stands for "thousand" in British English?

According to Free Dictionary definition, "mil" appears to be used for dimensional measurements. How about money?

Thanks in advance for your help! 🙂
 
Interesting! :)

When writing figures and to shorten the length I often see this "mil." for million, also in case of thousand K (from kilo?) seems to be used. (e.g. 260K for 260,000).

I did not know the usage of mil otherwise, so I'm very much interested to know the answer too.

---edit ---
Oh, I missed your post Mikawa Ossann, while I was writing mine... thanks for the link!
 
My first instinct is that it means million there, but I can't be sure without seeing the item itself. I know that mil can be used sometimes as an abbreviation for million in American English.

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Hmm, actually after looking at MO's link, it appears that 1 mil is one-tenth of a HK$ cent. That is 1HK$ = 1000 mil. Maybe that's what they're getting at.
 
Funny, I just saw the same thing today for the first time.

I bought a Asian art magazine printed in Hong Kong. On the cover it says HK$98.00/US$16.00. Inside it says a one year subscription is HK$650/US$85. Today was the first time I had ever seen anything marked in HK dollars.

Uncle Frank

☝
 
A little off topic, but this is what Wikipedia has to say about K for 1000.

Wikipedia said:
In the SI system (the metric system),

* k (for kilo) is an SI prefix denoting 10(to the)3(rd power) = 1,000 (one thousand). Consequently, the letter K can be used in spoken conversation to mean "thousand". Compare with use as a binary prefix in computing. In the case of money, the notation $12k is used for $12,000 (not k$12 or 12 k$).
Click to expand...

Apparently mil has quite a few meanings, as does K.
 
undrentide said:
Interesting! :)

When writing figures and to shorten the length I often see this "mil." for million, also in case of thousand K (from kilo?) seems to be used. (e.g. 260K for 260,000).
Click to expand...

Yes, if I had seen a dot after mil (mil.), I wouldn't be asking this question, since it would then be clearly an abbreviation for million.

I can't determine whether "mil" stands for million or thousand because "__ million HK dollars" appears to be too large and "__thousand HK dollars" seems too small as stock value or funds procured by business enterprises in the table... 😌
 
Last edited:
epigene said:
Yes, if I had seen a dot after mil (mil.), I wouldn't be asking this question, since it would then be clearly an abbreviation for million.
I can't determine whether "mil" stands for million or thousand because "__ million HK dollars" appears to be too large and "__thousand HK dollars" seems too small as stock value or funds procured by business enterprises in the table... 😌
Click to expand...

Here is what I found; hope it helps:
The basic unit of the Hong Kong dollar is dollar (ﾅ｡ﾂ｢ for a formal form; 窶ｰﾃ｡ in spoken Cantonese, perhaps a transliteration of the first syllable of "money", but some suggest that the character is the corruption of ﾃ｣m; also ﾅ陳ｳ for a less formal form). One dollar is divided into 100 cents (ﾂ静･ on the reverse side of discontinued coins and in spoken Cantonese, a transliteration of ﾂ"centﾂ", 窶｢ﾂｪ in Mandarin). Ten cents is called 1 ho in Chinese (ﾅｸ| on the reverse side and in spoken Cantonese, ﾅｸ|ﾅｽq in colloquial speech, ﾅ?p in Mandarin). One mil (one-tenth cent) was known as 1 man or 1 tsin in Cantonese (窶｢ﾂｶ or ﾂ静ｧ on reserve side of discontinued coins, in spoken Cantonese and Mandarin). The largest denomination of the present-day Hong Kong currency is the one thousand-dollar note, whereas the smallest is the ten-cent coin.
 
The only use I have heard for use in terms of money is a Million. From reading the first post it sounds like a million Hong Kong Dollars. Also the word most used for a thousand in money terms is a 'Grand', it is more of a slang term.

'Mil' is also used as a measurement in two uses, the first is very common, it is short for 'Centimeters', withing the building trade you would hear 'Mil' being used a great deal.

Secondly 'Mil' is used in Military terms when aiming and firing weapons. I have heard gunners say that they are off target and they need to change the trajectory by two or three mils.
 
Thanks for the responses!

I wanted to know especially what British English speakers think, since someone told me that "mil" might be used to mean "thousand" in British English, though I found nothing suggesting that in dictionaries I've checked. 😌

Thanks again! 🙂
 
Is the table somewhere where we can see it online. It still seems like the most likely one is mil = 1/10 cent = 1/1000 HKD
 
JimmySeal said:
Is the table somewhere where we can see it online. It still seems like the most likely one is mil = 1/10 cent = 1/1000 HKD
Click to expand...
Thank you so much, JimmySeal.
Unfortunately, the table belongs to a confidential report that I cannot disclose online.

The table shows a list of stock exchange listing fees required in Australia, Singapore and UK SEs.
An example is:
Market capitalisation at listing (HK$ mil): 5000

This part of the report discusses the high level of US listing fee (around 7%) vis-a-vis the countries mentioned (approx. 2% or less).

Considering the nature of the discussion, "mil" very likely is million since HK$5000 million (figure given as market capitalization estimate for a large business corporation) is around US$640 million??
 
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