millisecond

noun

mil·​li·​sec·​ond ˈmi-lə-ˌse-kənd 

-kənt

: one thousandth of a second

Did you know?

A millisecond isn't long enough for the blink of an eye, but a few milliseconds may determine the winner of a swim race or a hundred-yard dash. With the ever-increasing speed of modern technology, even a millisecond has started to seem a little sluggish; computer operations are now measured in nanoseconds—that is, billionths of a second.

Examples of millisecond in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

And the people who comprise markets are making infinite decisions every millisecond on the way to information creation that is exponentially greater than the knowledge possessed by government officials. —John Tamny, Forbes, 19 Jan. 2025

Less velocity from the fastball gives the batter the gift of milliseconds, and the offspeed pitches might have suffered from that extra time. —Grant Brisbee, The Athletic, 9 Jan. 2025

Yet nothing could have prepared me for the lovefest that is attending a Coldplay show — each millisecond calibrated for maximum explosions of communal joy. —Alex Morris, Rolling Stone, 19 Dec. 2024

In this scenario, organizations implementing edge-native security have reported reducing response times from minutes to milliseconds for threat detection while significantly decreasing operational complexity. —Rafael Umann, Forbes, 10 Jan. 2025

Word History

Etymology

International Scientific Vocabulary

First Known Use

1909, in the meaning defined above

Kids Definition

millisecond

noun

mil·​li·​sec·​ond ˈmil-ə-ˌsek-ənd 

 also  -ənt

: one thousandth of a second

Medical Definition

millisecond

noun

mil·​li·​sec·​ond ˈmil-ə-ˌsek-ənd, -ənt 

: one thousandth of a second

—abbreviation ms, msec