Billion

A billion is a number with two distinct definitions:

  • 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 meaning in both British and American English.[1][2]
  • 1,000,000,000,000, i.e. one million million, or 1012 (ten to the twelfth power), as defined on the long scale. This is one thousand times larger than the short scale billion, and equivalent to the short scale trillion. This is the historic definition of a billion in British English.
See also billon, billion (disambiguation), and 1,000,000,000.

American English adopted the short scale definition from the French.[3] 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; the long scale definition still enjoys some limited usage in the UK.[4]

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 still found occasionally in English, and is very common in most other European languages.[5][6] For example, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Hebrew (Asia), Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian — 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 thousand times larger than the modern English billion. However, in Russian, while milliard (миллиард) is used for the short scale billion, trillion (триллион) is used for the long scale 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 (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.[3] 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."[4]

gollark: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ebola-virus-disease says it's 50%ish.
gollark: Hold on, checking.
gollark: I heard the survival rate's better in developed countries, around 60%.
gollark: Yes, ebola isn't very contagious.
gollark: That looks very outdated.

See also

References
  1. "How many is a billion?". oxforddictionaries.com.
  2. Dent, Susie (28 October 2011). "How billions and trillions changed". BBC News. Retrieved 10 July 2015.
  3. "billion, n.". OED Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved June 15, 2019.
  4. Cracknell, Richard; Bolton, Paul (January 2009). Statistical literacy guide: What is a billion? And other units (PDF) (Report). House of Commons Library. Retrieved 10 July 2015.
  5. "Com s'escriuen els nombres? How to write the numbers?". Serveis i recursos lingüístics. Idiomes a la UPC (in Catalan). Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.
  6. "Confusions amb el "billion" i el "trillion" anglesos". ésAdir-El portal lingüístic de la Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals (in Catalan). Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals.
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