Italian 'milione' — literally 'great thousand,' coined by Italian merchants who needed a word beyond 'thousand.'
The cardinal number equivalent to one thousand thousands; the number 1,000,000.
From Middle French 'million,' from Old Italian 'milione,' an augmentative of 'mille' (thousand), from Latin 'mīlle' (thousand). The augmentative suffix '-one' (meaning 'big, great') transformed 'mille' into 'milione,' literally 'a great thousand' or 'a big thousand.' The word entered English in the late 14th century, reflecting the growing need for large-number vocabulary driven by Italian banking
Marco Polo's 13th-century travel account was nicknamed 'Il Milione' ('The Million') — not because of the word for the number, but as a play on his family name 'Emilione.' The coincidence helped popularize the word 'milione' in Italian, associating it with fabulous, almost unbelievable quantities. The English word 'mile' is also from Latin 'mīlle' — a Roman mile was 'mīlle passūs' (a thousand