scientific notation
Scientific notation is a way of expressing numbers that are too large or too small (usually would result in a long string of digits) to be conveniently written in decimal form. It may be referred to as scientific form or standard index form, o ...
digit grouping
A decimal separator is a symbol used to separate the integer part from the fractional part of a number written in decimal form (e.g., "." in 12.45). Different countries officially designate different symbols for use as the separator. The choi ...
, it is written as 1,00,000. For example, in India, 150,000 rupees becomes 1.5 ''lakh'' rupees, written as 1,50,000 or INR 1,50,000.
It is widely used both in official and other contexts in
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
,
Bangladesh
Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...
,
Bhutan
Bhutan (; dz, འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, Druk Yul ), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan,), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is situated in the Eastern Himalayas, between China in the north and India in the south. A mountainou ...
,
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
,
Myanmar
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...
,
Nepal
Nepal (; ne, :ne:नेपाल, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne,
सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in S ...
,
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...
attributive
In grammar, an attributive expression is a word or phrase within a noun phrase that modifies the head noun. It may be an:
* attributive adjective
* attributive noun
* attributive verb
or other part of speech, such as an attributive numeral.
...
and non-attributive noun with either an unmarked or marked ("-s") plural, respectively. For example: "1 ''lakh'' people"; "''lakhs'' of people"; "20 ''lakh'' rupees"; "''lakhs'' of rupees". In the abbreviated form, usage such as "5L" or "5 lac" (for "5 ''lakh'' rupees") is common. In this system of numeration, 100 ''lakh'' is called one '' crore'' and is equal to 10 million.
Silver market
The term is also used in the pricing of silver on the international precious metals market, where one ''lakh'' equals of
silver
Silver is a chemical element with the symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical ...
.
Etymology and regional variants
The modern word ''lakh'' derives from sa, लक्ष, translit=lakṣa, originally denoting "mark, target, stake in gambling", but also used as the numeral for "100,000" in Gupta-era Classical Sanskrit ('' Yājñavalkya Smṛti'', '' Harivaṃśa'').
Another possible etymology comes from the root word for the lac bug, used to produce
shellac
Shellac () is a resin secreted by the female lac bug on trees in the forests of India and Thailand. It is processed and sold as dry flakes and dissolved in alcohol to make liquid shellac, which is used as a brush-on colorant, food glaze and ...
. The word lakh is a unit in the Indian numbering system for and presumably refers to the large number of insects that swarm on host trees, up to .
* In Assamese: ''lokhyo'', or ''lakh''
* In Bengali: natively (tadbhava) known as ''lākh'', though some use the ardha-tatsama ''lokkho''.
* In
Hindi
Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
: ''lākh''
* In Dhivehi: ލައްކަ ''la'kha''
* In Gujarati: ''lākh''
* In
Kannada
Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...
: ''lakṣha''
* In Kashmiri: ''lachh''
* In Khasi: ''lak''
* In
Malayalam
Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 2 ...
Gurmukhi
Gurmukhī ( pa, ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ, , Shahmukhi: ) is an abugida developed from the Laṇḍā scripts, standardized and used by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad (1504–1552). It is used by Punjabi Sikhs to write the language, commonly ...
: ) ''lakkh''
* In Sinhala:
* In Tamil: ''latcham''
* In Telugu: ''lakṣha''
* In
English numerals
English number words include numerals and various words derived from them, as well as a large number of words borrowed from other languages.
Cardinal numbers
Cardinal numbers refer to the size of a group. In English, these words are numerals.
...
Names of large numbers
Two naming scales for large numbers have been used in English and other European languages since the early modern era: the long and short scales. Most English variants use the short scale today, but the long scale remains dominant in many non-E ...