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From French, kilo- irregularly derived from Ancient Greekχίλιοι(khílioi, “one thousand”). The etymologically "correct" form would be chili- or chilo-, resulting in forms such as chiliasme(“chiliasm”) or chilopode(“centipede”); but the French, when creating the prefix, had to avoid a possible (standard) pronunciation of chi as /ʃi/, too close to the vulgar verb chier.
The letter k is not normally used in Catalan. Instead, Catalan orthography calls for using the qu digraph to represent the /k/ sound before an e or an i. Therefor, when the metric system was introduced into Catalan, the prefix kilo- was originally spelled quilo-. With the advent of k as a standard international abbreviation, usage of kilo- has become not only acceptable, but also more common than the traditional spelling. However, traditionalists still insist upon the use of quilo-.
“kilo-”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2023-07-01