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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
On those three days, just over a millisecond is expected to be shaved off the standard 24-hour day.
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Eric Lagatta, USA Today, 10 July 2025
Independence Day occasionally strays into the megalo-melodramatic, and never more so than when a dog makes a slow-motion leap into a doorway just milliseconds before a wall of flames nearly engulfs him.
—Ew Staff Published, EW.com, 3 July 2025
Orchestrating requests in milliseconds without glitches demands flawless backend architecture.
—Roomy Khan, Forbes.com, 3 July 2025
The entire system worked with latency down to around 10 milliseconds—the conversion of brain signals into sounds was effectively instantaneous.
—ArsTechnica, 29 June 2025
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Eric Lagatta, USA Today, 10 July 2025
Independence Day occasionally strays into the megalo-melodramatic, and never more so than when a dog makes a slow-motion leap into a doorway just milliseconds before a wall of flames nearly engulfs him.
—Ew Staff Published, EW.com, 3 July 2025
Orchestrating requests in milliseconds without glitches demands flawless backend architecture.
—Roomy Khan, Forbes.com, 3 July 2025
The entire system worked with latency down to around 10 milliseconds—the conversion of brain signals into sounds was effectively instantaneous.
—ArsTechnica, 29 June 2025
See All Example Sentences for millisecond
Cite this Entry
“Millisecond.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/millisecond. Accessed 24 Jul. 2025.
Copy CitationKids 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
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