Myriora English › Words › Chapter 1: Building words: prefixes, suffixes and roots
Number prefixes
Ages 7–9Chapter 1 · Lesson 6✓ Watched
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Practise
Ten new questions every time. Answer them all, then check: you get your score, and the working for anything you missed.
In this lesson
- Uni means one, bi means two, and tri means three.
- Cent means a hundred.
- And milli comes from a thousand.
Your turn
How many years are there in a century?
Show the answer
Cent means a hundred, so a century is a hundred years!
The common mistake
Here's a common mistake. Does a centipede have a hundred legs? Cent means a hundred, so lots of people think so. But the name just means it has lots of legs. Real centipedes have anything from about thirty to over three hundred, and never exactly a hundred!
Try it at home
Hunt for number words around the house and in books: bicycle, triangle, century, millimetre. Say what the number part means each time.
Read the whole lesson
Hello, and welcome to Myriora English! What's the difference between a unicycle, a bicycle and a tricycle? The number of wheels! And the start of each word tells you how many.
Uni means one. A unicycle has one wheel, and a unicorn has one horn. Bi means two. A bicycle has two wheels. Tri means three. A tricycle has three wheels, and a triangle has three angles.
Some number prefixes are much bigger. Cent means a hundred. A century is a hundred years. And per cent means out of a hundred.
Milli comes from the word for a thousand. A millennium is a thousand years. And a millimetre is a thousandth of a metre. That's tiny!
Let's try one together. How many legs does a tripod have? Say it out loud!
Three! Tri means three, so a tripod stands on three legs. Well done if you said three!
Here's a common mistake. Does a centipede have a hundred legs? Cent means a hundred, so lots of people think so. But the name just means it has lots of legs. Real centipedes have anything from about thirty to over three hundred, and never exactly a hundred!
Your turn! How many years are there in a century? Pick the right card. You've got eight seconds, or pause the video. Go!
Time's up! Cent means a hundred, so a century is a hundred years!
Quick review. Uni means one, bi means two, and tri means three. Cent means a hundred. And milli comes from a thousand. See you next time!
‹ Previous lesson-ness, -ment and -ly Next lesson ›Greek and Latin roots