Did you mayhaps mean one of these? millimeter, millipede, millipedes
Definitions
Wiktionary
- n. informal A unit of measure of pulchritude, corresponding to the amount of beauty required to launch one ship.
Etymologies
- From the SI prefix milli- (indicating a thousandth) + Helen, of Troy, the maiden so beautiful that her abduction by Paris sparked the Trojan War and was said, in Christopher Marlowe's 1604 Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, to have ‘launched a thousand ships’. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“The one I remembered was millihelen, the amount of beauty required to launch just one ship.”
“Besides the examples I have given above, there are two units of measurement named for women: the curie (named for Marie, not Pierre) and the millihelen, the unit of beauty needed to launch one ship.”
“Martin Harris Slobodkin Cambridge, Massachusetts If the milli-helen of W.K. Viertel [III, 4] is accepted by the American National Metric Council, they will probably insist that it be written millihelen, i.e., without the hyphen.”
“Since it is planned to eventually substitute 3.6 megajoule (symbol MJ) for a kilowatt-hour, the redefinition of millihelen to helen could be done at the same time.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘millihelen’.
-
sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
-
fake words, meant to be amusing
generally obtained by a small perturbation of an existing word, e.g. by changing a single letter, or by coining a portmanteau word
porcubine, vanatee, slobster, shopgifter, millihelen, rumbat, bozon, dopeler effect, mach turtle, octopuss, eskimo pi, cannape and 200 more...
-
The Measure of Man
Unusual, arcane, or obscure units of measure
cable, cabot, bushel, cade, caliper, callipic cycle, metonic cycle, cunit, air watt, ale gallon, allergy unit, amber and 228 more...
-
Fun with SI prefixes
gigascore, centigross, kilodozen, megafirkin, millimyriad, yoctogoogol, millihelen, decadent, millipicture, microfortnight, decifurlong, deciten and 11 more...
-
Much loved words
ungent, ineffable, curmudgeon, wether, bilk, nasaaq, quince, medlar, anencephalic, riddling grate, fetlock, synallagmatic and 24 more...
-
Super-fishy
Whut. Huh. Make it quick, I's gotsta go TV or whatever. Huh? That's too brainy.
Boobs.holophrasis, perfunctory, desultory, sciolist, smattering, epigone, velleity, dilettante, simulacrum, shallow, one-dimensional, noddy and 68 more...
-
frivolous units of measurement
gleaned from the interweb
machturtle, picoboo, won ton, octopuss, gigolo, millihelen, millipicture, ivy league, fig newton, eskimo pi, angstrom, mole and 52 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for millihelen.
bilby Consider also inviting picohelen to your next party. Nov 3, 2008
sionnach David Lance Goines, in this very funny essay Helen of Troy , argues that the definition needs to be a little more complicated, to reflect Helen's accomplishments accurately.
The exact citation from Marlowe states that Helen's face "launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium", suggesting that mere ship-launching ability is not enough, that any candidate measure of pulchritude also needs to capture skill as an arsonist.
This leads to a revised definition of the millihelen as "beauty sufficient to launch one Homeric warship and burn down a house".
Nov 3, 2008
wedunning@earthlink.net Yes, from Helen of Troy, in the phrase of Christopher Marlowe's Faustus: "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships...?" A milliHelen is a unit of gorgeousness sufficient to launch just one ship. A microHelen is enough to get one, maybe two, sailors all excited. Not exactly ugly, but fairly run-of-the-mill mud-fence sort of a mug, y'know?
Bill Dunning
Created by Isaac Asimov, so I'm told. Sep 1, 2008
reesetee What a great word! I presume this derives from Helen of Troy? Feb 20, 2007
sionnach unit of beauty; amount sufficient to launch a single ship Feb 20, 2007