The Rice University Neologisms Database

The actual formation is based on the resemblance of the name Mili Shah to a unit name due to the other meaning of “mili.” The formation process actually exemplifies a sort of back formation for a unit of measure so that it would coincide with the name of a lecturer. Its usage is limited to a group of students in a certain class at Rice and generally used for humorous purposes and therefore is not expected to ever carry any widespread scientific value as a real unit. It was a nonce derivation that represented an effort to give a humorous name to a seemingly absurd unit, m^(5/6), that showed up in an elec 261 problem.