megawatt

See also: mégawatt and mega-watt

English

Alternative forms

• mega-watt

Etymology

Etymology tree

Proto-Indo-European *méǵh₂s

Proto-Hellenic *mégas

Ancient Greek μέγᾰς (mégăs)der.

English mega-

English watt

English megawatt

From mega- + watt.

Pronunciation

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

megawatt (plural megawatts)

2. One million (1 000 000) watts, an amount of power large enough to power such things as an entire commercial building or a small passenger aircraft. (Consuming 1 megawatt during a duration of 1 hour consumes 1 megawatt-hour of energy.)

   Alternative form: MW (symbol)

   Holonyms: GW, gigawatt < TW, terawatt < PW, petawatt

   Meronyms: mW, milliwatt < W, watt < kW, kilowatt

   • 2004, Jesse Walker, Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America, page 197:

     Not long after the feds started regulating radio, Mexico's megawatt border blasters—high-powered stations planted just south of Texas and California—started beckoning. The FCC couldn't control them […]

   • 2007 July 25, Felicity Barringer, “California Utility Agrees to Buy Power Generated by Solar Array”, in The New York Times‎^[1]:

     SAN FRANCISCO, July 23 — Pacific Gas & Electric, Northern California’s major utility, is announcing a commitment on Wednesday to purchase 550 megawatts of solar power to be generated by troughlike arrays of mirrors spread over nine square miles in the Mojave Desert.

   • 2025 September 8, “The promise and peril of Ethiopia's new mega-dam: It could power the region or plunge it into another conflict”, in The Economist‎^[2]:

     In theory, the GERD could boost the region's economy [Horn of Africa and eastern North Africa]. At full capacity, it could generate close to 6,000 megawatts of electricity, double Ethiopia's entire output before the dam was built. Currently, just over 22% of the country's 122m people are connected to the grid. The dam could supply millions more with power, both in Ethiopia and through power deals with neighbouring countries. […] That will happen only if Ethiopia builds better transmission lines to connect more people to the grid and to send more power to its neighbours. At the moment the main beneficiaries of the power surplus generated by the dam are miners of cryptocurrencies. […] Their data centres, which have their own power lines, are expected to consume nearly a third of the country's electricity this year. Meanwhile, most electricity-deprived Ethiopians will probably have to wait years for their grid connection. At the current pace of expansion, the national power company expects just 27% of households to be connected by 2030, far off the national target of 96%.

Adjective

megawatt (comparative more megawatt, superlative most megawatt)

1. (figurative) Exceptionally powerful, intense, or enormous in impact.
   • 2008, David Foster, Hitman, Forty Years Making Music, Topping the Charts, and Winning Grammys:

     I also love the way you always greet me with a megawatt smile.

   • 2011, Melinda Newman, “A Hitmaker Reaches New Heights”, in Billboard‎^[3], volume 123, number 35, page 29:

     It has been nearly 30 years since Warren's first major hit, Laura Branigan's “Solitaire,” and her mega-watt success has seldom dimmed.

   • 2023, Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, Basketball Empire, France and the Making of a Global NBA and WNBA, page 212:

     Thanks to Parker's megawatt success in the NBA, kids in France began to dream of being like him and pursuing their own hoops dreams, which started to change the tenor of the game back home.

   • 2026 April 23, Hannah Mylrea, “Olivia Dean live in Glasgow: a new popstar’s victory lap”, in NME‎^[4]:

     As the opening riffs of megawatt single ‘Nice To Each Other’ kick in, the curtains open, revealing [Olivia] Dean in a sequinned pink gown, flanked by a slick band.

Usage notes

• Attributive use modifying smile or similar nouns are due to watt as measure of the power used by a lightbulb, and hence of its brilliance, by analogy to smiles and the like.

Derived terms

• megawattage
• megawatt-hour
• megawatt-year
• multimegawatt

Related terms

• negawatt (informal, a unit of energy saved)

Translations

one million watts

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 兆瓦 (zh) (zhàowǎ)

• Czech: megawatt m
• Danish: megawatt c
• Dutch: megawatt (nl)
• Finnish: megawatti (fi)
• French: mégawatt (fr) m
• German: Megawatt (de) n
• Icelandic: megavatt n
• Italian: megawatt (it) m
• Latvian: megavats
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: megawatt m

  Nynorsk: megawatt m

• Romanian: megawatt (ro)
• Russian: мегаватт (ru) m (megavatt)
• Slovak: megawatt (sk) m
• Slovene: megavat
• Swahili: megawati
• Swedish: megawatt (sv) c
• Thai: เมกะวัตต์
• Turkish: megavat (tr)
• Ukrainian: мегава́т m (mehavát)

Czech

Etymology

From mega- +‎ watt.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [ˈmɛɡavat]

Noun

megawatt m inan

1. megawatt

Declension

Declension of megawatt (hard masculine inanimate)

	singular	plural
nominative	megawatt	megawatty
genitive	megawattu	megawattů
dative	megawattu	megawattům
accusative	megawatt	megawatty
vocative	megawatte	megawatty
locative	megawattu	megawattech
instrumental	megawattem	megawatty

Further reading

• “megawatt”, in Kartotéka Novočeského lexikálního archivu (in Czech)
• “megawatt”, in Slovník spisovného jazyka českého (in Czech), 1960–1971, 1989

Danish

Etymology

mega- +‎ watt

Noun

megawatt

1. megawatt

Further reading

• “megawatt” in Den Danske Ordbog

Dutch

Etymology

From mega- +‎ watt.

Pronunciation

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

megawatt

1. megawatt

Italian

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English megawatt. By surface analysis, mega- +‎ watt.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈmɛ.ɡa.vat/, /ˌmɛ.ɡaˈvat/
• Rhymes: -ɛɡavat, -at

Noun

megawatt m (invariable)

1. megawatt

Further reading

• megawatt in Dizionario Italiano Olivetti, Olivetti Media Communication

Romanian

Etymology

From mega- +‎ watt.

Noun

megawatt

1. megawatt

Further reading

• “megawatt”, in DEX online—Dicționare ale limbii române (Dictionaries of the Romanian language) (in Romanian), 2004–2026

Slovak

Etymology

From mega- +‎ watt.

Noun

megawatt m inan (relational adjective megawattový)

1. megawatt

Declension

Declension of megawatt
(pattern dub)

	singular	plural
nominative	megawatt	megawatty
genitive	megawattu	megawattov
dative	megawattu	megawattom
accusative	megawatt	megawatty
locative	megawatte	megawattoch
instrumental	megawattom	megawattmi

Further reading

• “megawatt”, in Slovníkový portál Jazykovedného ústavu Ľ. Štúra SAV [Dictionary portal of the Ľ. Štúr Institute of Linguistics, Slovak Academy of Science] (in Slovak), https://slovnik.juls.savba.sk, 2003–2026

Swedish

Etymology

mega- +‎ watt

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /meːɡavat/, /mɛɡavat/

Noun

megawatt

1. megawatt

Further reading

• “megawatt”, in Svenska Akademiens ordbok [Dictionary of the Swedish Academy] (in Swedish)