megawatt

American

[meg-uh-wot] / ˈmɛg əˌwɒt /

noun

Electricity.

a unit of power, equal to one million watts. MW

megawatt British

/ ˈmɛɡəˌwɒt /

noun

MW. one million watts

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

megawatt Cultural

A unit of power: one million watts. A typical large electrical generating plant can produce a thousand megawatts of electricity.

Etymology

Origin of megawatt

First recorded in 1895–1900; mega- + watt

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

megawatt

Parton, never dropping her megawatt smile, replied, “If you had’ve, it would have been something very natural. But I would have probably kicked your shins or something.”

From Salon ● Aug. 26, 2026

The new CS-4 aims to help speed up these workflows by increasing the amount of tokens generated per megawatt tenfold relative to its CS-3 predecessor.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 19, 2026

According to the researchers, a 10 megawatt PEM electrolysis tank system currently costs approximately HK$17.8 million.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 11, 2026

Adding batteries to a solar project increased costs to about $109 per megawatt hour, up from $91.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026

Sasha was now about a year old, wobbling on two feet and beginning to say words and crack us up with her megawatt smiles.

From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023