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up vote 1 down vote favorite

As in:

He broke the world record of 14.05

I tried searching Wikipedia and ended up with centisecond. It sounds so scientific. What is it called in colloquial English?

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3  
It's a tenth or hundredth of a second, not a percent – simchona♦ Aug 28 '12 at 5:54
edit my question, thanks for correcting me – KiL Aug 28 '12 at 5:57
3  
He broke the world record of fourteen and five hundredths of a second. – Jim Aug 28 '12 at 5:58

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up vote 8 down vote accepted

Centisecond, while valid, is an extremely rarely used unit, as is hectometer or deciliter.

You either measure "hundredths of second" or tens of milliseconds. In engineering, milliseconds are preferable. In sports hundredths are the defacto standard; as Jim said: fourteen and five hundredths of a second.

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Not convinced... OK, commentators often get it wrong, but when Usain Bolt won the 100m they refered to his time as nine point six three seconds - beating Yohan Blake by twelve hundredths of a second – Andrew Aug 28 '12 at 10:55
@Andrew: The "point X X" spoken notation is very common (probably quite more common than "hundredths") when presenting the actual result, but it isn't naming the unit. OP's question was "what is it called?" and in sport it's called "hundredths" or "hundredths of second" and nothing else, and that's what's used when the unit needs to be named: "Faster by a couple hundredths of second", not "faster by point oh few" or "by a few point oh ones". – SF. Aug 28 '12 at 11:32
fair point... I was focussing on the quoted text, rather than the question :) – Andrew Aug 28 '12 at 12:07
up vote 4 down vote

I don't know anyone who would call this a five centiseconds... 50 milliseconds maybe.

It would normally be pronounced fourteen point oh-five seconds.

Edited to add: Differences maybe given in hundredths of a second.

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up vote 2 down vote

Whatever you wish to call the unit (I normally call it a hundredth of a second), you seem to be confused about measurement. The record is 14.05 seconds, or if you prefer, 1,405 centiseconds/hundredths of a second.

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