Mega

How to spell mega

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce mega

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mega mean?

1. adjectiveInformal term meaning very large, impressive, or excellent.
2. adverbInformal intensifier meaning extremely or very, chiefly in casual British speech.

Mega in a sentence

• adjective

  The new shopping centre is a mega development covering several blocks.

• adverb

  The tickets turned out to be mega expensive once fees were added.

• adjective

  Landing the contract was a mega success for the small firm.

• adverb

  Everyone agreed the concert was mega exciting from start to finish.

Where does mega come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes straight from the Greek megas, which simply meant 'great', 'large', or 'mighty'. For a long time it lived in English only as a combining form, mega-, attached to scientific and technical terms to mean 'very large' or, in the metric system, a factor of one million, as in megaton, megabyte, and megahertz. During the twentieth century, and especially from the 1960s onward, English speakers cut the prefix loose and began using 'mega' on its own as a casual word for anything enormous or impressive. Its informal force grew alongside the computer age, when measurements like megabytes made the syllable feel powerful and modern. The single hard 'g' and the simple four letters keep the spelling close to the original Greek root, so it carries no real trap beyond remembering it is one word, not 'megga'.

How the word is built

• mega- (from Greek megas: great, large), used as a standalone informal word