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

Institutions that once reconciled data overnight now respond in milliseconds. —Murugan Lakshmanan, Forbes.com, 8 May 2025

If your heart is more adaptable, there will be more variance in the milliseconds between heartbeats. —Allison Tsai, Verywell Health, 5 May 2025

This is much closer to the 100-200 millisecond time gap in normal speech. —ArsTechnica, 21 Apr. 2025

But each millisecond, each point gain, matters when the margins are this thin throughout the grid. —Madeline Coleman, New York Times, 14 Apr. 2025

Word History

Etymology

International Scientific Vocabulary

First Known Use

1909, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for millisecond

• femtosecond
• microsecond
• nanosecond
• picosecond
• beckoned
• reckoned
• second
• seconde

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