Mile

How to spell mile

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce mile

What does mile mean?

1. nounA unit of distance equal to 1,760 yards, about 1.6 kilometres.

Mile in a sentence

• The nearest petrol station is about a mile down the road.

• She runs a mile every morning before work.

Where does mile come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word goes back to the Latin phrase mille passus, meaning 'a thousand paces', because the Roman mile was reckoned as a thousand double steps of a marching soldier, roughly 1,480 metres. The key word there is mille, the Latin for 'thousand', which also survives in everyday English words such as 'million' and 'millennium'. The plural form milia passuum was clipped down to mille and then carried into the Germanic languages, giving Old English mil long before the Norman Conquest. Over the centuries the exact length drifted, and an English statute of 1593 finally fixed the mile at 1,760 yards, the figure still used today. The single 'l' and silent final 'e' make it an easy spelling, though it is worth keeping it distinct from the unrelated 'mil', a thousandth of an inch.

How the word is built

• mile (single root, from Latin mille passus 'a thousand paces')