What does "milliwatt" mean?

One thousandth (10⁻³) of a watt, an amount of power that can power a small electronic device such as a single microchip. (Consuming 1 milliwatt during a duration of 1 hour consumes 1 milliwatt-hour of energy.).

Milliwatt

Q: How do you use "milliwatt" in a sentence?

Holonyms: W, watt < kW, kilowatt < MW, megawatt < GW, gigawatt < TW, terawatt < PW, petawatt

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
One thousandth (10⁻³) of a watt, an amount of power that can power a small electronic device such as a single microchip. (Consuming 1 milliwatt during a duration of 1 hour consumes 1 milliwatt-hour of energy.).
"Holonyms: W, watt < kW, kilowatt < MW, megawatt < GW, gigawatt < TW, terawatt < PW, petawatt"
2
a unit of power equal to one thousandth of a watt wordnet

Example

More examples

"Holonyms: W, watt < kW, kilowatt < MW, megawatt < GW, gigawatt < TW, terawatt < PW, petawatt"

Etymology

From milli- + watt.

Related phrases

milliwatt-hour milliwatt-year

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.