What Does Kilo Mean?

The word kilo is derived from the Greek word Khilioi which means a thousand. The symbol kilo is a prefix in the International System of Units. It usually denotes 103 or 1000. For instance kilogram is a thousand grams, kilometre is a thousand meters, kilowatt is a thousand watts and kilojoule is a thousand joules. Although the term has been used for a long time it was officially adopted way back in 1795.

In addition in the NATO Phonetic Alphabet Kilo is also the letter K.  In Russia kilo class is a kind of naval submarine. In computer terminology kilo is equal to 1024 (210) and is most commonly used in connection with storage. For instance a single kilobyte is not a thousand kilobytes it is 1024 kilobytes.