What ₥ means
A tenth of a cent, a thousandth of a dollar. Ten mills make one cent, a thousand make one dollar. The sign is a lowercase m with a stroke through it, built the same way as is a c with a stroke.
The Coinage Act of 1792 split the dollar into dimes, cents and mills, following decimal plans Thomas Jefferson had pushed in the 1780s. The cent and dime became coins; the mill stayed a unit of account, used only for figuring amounts too fine for any coin.
Where will I actually run into mills?
Mostly on US property-tax bills, written as the word. A millage rate counts tax per thousand dollars: 1 mill is 1 for every 1,000 of assessed value. A rate of 20 mills on a home assessed at 200,000 is 4,000 a year.
The other everyday case is the fuel pump. US gas prices end in a small 9/10, as in 3.49⁹₁₀: that extra digit is nine mills. Outside these, ₥ turns up in currency-symbol tables, old ledgers and texts on money history.
Technical, financial and historical; you will almost never see it in prices or chat.
A mill is a tenth of a cent; reading ₥ as cents makes the amount ten times too big.
Part of the collection
What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readingsTax per 1,000 of assessed value; 1 mill is 1 per 1,000.
Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
1
Worth knowing
- A few US states issued their own tax tokens worth one or a few mills in the 1930s so shoppers could pay sales tax on small purchases.
Questions people ask
2Is a mill the same as a mil?
No. A mil is a thousandth of an inch, used for wire and plastic thickness. Both come from Latin mille, a thousand, but only the mill is money.
Why do I see a box instead of ₥?
Your font lacks this character. The text still contains the mill sign; a font with wider coverage will show it.
More like this
9
How to type or find ₥
- Also called
- mil sign · millage sign
- Search it as
- mill · mills · millage · mill levy · tenth of a cent · thousandth of a dollar · m with stroke
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
₥\20A5Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.