Milione

Milione is the Italian word for one million, the base-10 numeral equal to 1,000,000. It is used in singular form as un milione and in plural as milioni. In Italian, milione is commonly employed with di to indicate an amount (un milione di persone) and is contrasted with mille (one thousand) and miliardo (one billion). The standard written form for the number is 1.000.000 or 10^6.

Etymology and usage notes are generally described as deriving from the root related to mille (thousand) with an augmentative suffix to denote a large quantity. In everyday language, milione functions as a stable unit for counting large numbers and appears across journalism, science, finance, and official statistics.

Il Milione, the Italian title of The Travels of Marco Polo, is a medieval travelogue attributed to Marco Polo and Rustichello da Pisa. Composed in the late 13th century, the work recounts Polo’s travels through Asia, including his time at the court of Kublai Khan, during 1271–1295. The text circulated in several manuscript traditions and languages, and was widely read in Europe during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. It significantly influenced European geographical knowledge, cartography, and the imagination of Asia, though its factual reliability is debated among scholars, as the narrative blends eyewitness detail with secondhand report and literary embellishment. The title Il Milione is a modern Italian designation; historical copies bore various titles in different languages.

In contemporary Italian, milione remains the standard term for one million and is commonly used in both mathematical and everyday contexts.