/na-nə-/
[CMU: from nanosecond]
n.
A brief period of time.
"Be with you in a nano"
means you really will be free shortly, i.e., implies what mainstream people mean by
"in a jiffy"
(whereas the hackish use of jiffy is quite different -- see jiffy).
[SI: the next quantifier below micro-; meaning * 10-9]
pref. Smaller than micro-, and used in the same rather loose and connotative way. Thus, one has nanotechnology (coined by hacker K. Eric Drexler) by analogy with microtechnology; and a few machine architectures have a nanocode level below microcode. Tom Duff at Bell Labs has also pointed out that
"Pi seconds is a nanocentury".
See also quantifiers, pico-, nanoacre, nanobot, nanocomputer, nanofortnight.