Billion

Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions:

Contents

• History
• See also
• References

• 1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or 10⁹ (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is now the most common sense of the word in all varieties of English; it has long been established in American English and has since become common in Britain and other English-speaking countries as well. ^{[1] [2] [3]}
• 1,000,000,000,000, i.e. one million million, or 10¹² (ten to the twelfth power), as defined on the long scale. This number is the historical sense of the word and remains the established sense of the word in other European languages. Though displaced by the short scale definition relatively early in US English, it remained the most common sense of the word in Britain until the 1950s and still remains in occasional use there. ^[3]

American English adopted the short scale definition from the French (it enjoyed usage in France at the time, alongside the long-scale definition). ^[4] The United Kingdom used the long scale billion until 1974, when the government officially switched to the short scale, but since the 1950s the short scale had already been increasingly used in technical writing and journalism. ^[5] Moreover even in 1941, Churchill remarked "For all practical financial purposes a billion represents one thousand millions...". ^[6]

Other countries use the word billion (or words cognate to it) to denote either the long scale or short scale billion. (For details, see Long and short scales § Current usage.)

Milliard, another term for one thousand million, is extremely rare in English, but words similar to it are very common in other European languages. ^{[7] [8]} For example, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Hebrew (Asia), Hungarian, Italian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Kurdish, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese (although the expression mil milhões — a thousand million — is far more common), Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish (although the expression mil millones — a thousand million — is far more common), Swedish, Tajik, Turkish, Ukrainian and Uzbek — use milliard, or a related word, for the short scale billion, and billion (or a related word) for the long scale billion. Thus for these languages billion is a thousand times as large as the modern English billion.

History

According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the word billion was formed in the 16th century (from million and the prefix bi- , "two"), meaning the second power of a million (1,000,000² = 10¹²). This long scale definition was similarly applied to trillion , quadrillion and so on. The words were originally Latin, and entered English around the end of the 17th century. Later, French arithmeticians changed the words' meanings, adopting the short scale definition whereby three zeros rather than six were added at each step, so a billion came to denote a thousand million (10⁹), a trillion became a million million (10¹²), and so on. This new convention was adopted in the United States in the 19th century, but Britain retained the original long scale use. France, in turn, reverted to the long scale in 1948. ^[4]

In Britain, however, under the influence of American usage, the short scale came to be increasingly used. In 1974, Prime Minister Harold Wilson confirmed that the government would use the word billion only in its short scale meaning (one thousand million). In a written answer to Robin Maxwell-Hyslop MP, who asked whether official usage would conform to the traditional British meaning of a million million, Wilson stated: "No. The word 'billion' is now used internationally to mean 1,000 million and it would be confusing if British Ministers were to use it in any other sense. I accept that it could still be interpreted in this country as 1 million million and I shall ask my colleagues to ensure that, if they do use it, there should be no ambiguity as to its meaning." ^[5]

See also

Look up billion in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Names of large numbers

Related Research Articles

The English language was introduced to the Americas by the arrival of the British, beginning in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The language also spread to numerous other parts of the world as a result of British trade and settlement and the spread of the former British Empire, which, by 1921, included 470–570 million people, about a quarter of the world's population. In England, Wales, Ireland and especially parts of Scotland there are differing varieties of the English language, so the term 'British English' is an oversimplification. Likewise, spoken American English varies widely across the country. Written forms of British and American English as found in newspapers and textbooks vary little in their essential features, with only occasional noticeable differences.

A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically, which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, pronunciations, translation, etc. It is a lexicographical reference that shows inter-relationships among the data.

Giga- ( or ) is a unit prefix in the metric system denoting a factor of a short-scale billion or long-scale milliard (10⁹ or 1,000,000,000). It has the symbol G.

A thesaurus, sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings, sometimes as a hierarchy of broader and narrower terms, sometimes simply as lists of synonyms and antonyms. They are often used by writers to help find the best word to express an idea:

...to find the word, or words, by which [an] idea may be most fitly and aptly expressed

The tonne is a unit of mass equal to 1,000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton in the United States to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton and the long ton. It is equivalent to approximately 2,204.6 pounds, 1.102 short tons, and 0.984 long tons. The official SI unit is the megagram (Mg), a less common way to express the same amount.

A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words begin, start, commence, and initiate are all synonyms of one another: they are synonymous. The standard test for synonymy is substitution: one form can be replaced by another in a sentence without changing its meaning.

A crore (; abbreviated cr) denotes ten million (10,000,000 or 10⁷ in scientific notation) and is equal to 100 lakh in the Indian numbering system. It is written as 1,00,00,000 with the local 2,2,3 style of digit group separators (one lakh is equal to one hundred thousand, and is written as 1,00,000).

English number words include numerals and various words derived from them, as well as a large number of words borrowed from other languages.

This is a list of British words not widely used in the United States. In Commonwealth of Nations, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, India, South Africa, and Australia, some of the British terms listed are used, although another usage is often preferred.

Nicolas Chuquet was a French mathematician. He invented his own notation for algebraic concepts and exponentiation. He may have been the first mathematician to recognize zero and negative numbers as exponents.

Many languages have words expressing indefinite and fictitious numbers—inexact terms of indefinite size, used for comic effect, for exaggeration, as placeholder names, or when precision is unnecessary or undesirable. One technical term for such words is "non-numerical vague quantifier". Such words designed to indicate large quantities can be called "indefinite hyperbolic numerals".

Two naming scales for large numbers have been used in English and other European languages since the early modern era: the long and short scales. Most English variants use the short scale today, but the long scale remains dominant in many non-English-speaking areas, including continental Europe and Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America. These naming procedures are based on taking the number n occurring in 10³ⁿ⁺³ or 10⁶ⁿ and concatenating Latin roots for its units, tens, and hundreds place, together with the suffix -illion.

The Indian numbering system is used in the Indian subcontinent to express large numbers. The terms lakh or 1,00,000 and crore or 1,00,00,000 are the most commonly used terms in Indian English to express large numbers in the system.

The long and short scales are two of several naming systems for integer powers of ten which use some of the same terms for different magnitudes.

bya or b.y.a. is an abbreviation for "billion years ago". It is commonly used as a unit of time to denote length of time before the present in 10⁹ years. This initialism is often used in the sciences of astronomy, geology, and paleontology.

Despite the various English dialects spoken from country to country and within different regions of the same country, there are only slight regional variations in English orthography, the two most notable variations being British and American spelling. Many of the differences between American and British or Commonwealth English date back to a time before spelling standards were developed. For instance, some spellings seen as "American" today were once commonly used in Britain, and some spellings seen as "British" were once commonly used in the United States.

The grave accent is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan and many other western European languages as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages using the Latin alphabet, such as Mohawk and Yoruba, and with non-Latin writing systems such as the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets and the Bopomofo or Zhuyin Fuhao semi-syllabary. It has no single meaning, but can indicate pitch, stress, or other features.

Jehan Adam was a French 15th century mathematician. He was secretary to Nicholle Tilhart, who was notary, secretary and auditor of accounts to King Louis XI of France.

Trillion is a number with two distinct definitions:

References