trillion
/ˈtɹɪljən/ numeral, noun
Forms trillions
- numeral (US, modern UK, Australia, short scale) A million (times a) million: 1 followed by twelve zeros, 10¹².
- numeral (dated UK, Australia, long scale) A million (times a) million (times a) million: 1 followed by eighteen zeros, 10¹⁸.
- numeral (colloquial, hyperbolic) An unspecified very large number. “There were trillions of people at the concert.”
- noun (basketball, slang) A statistic formed by a player playing some number of minutes, but recording no stats.
Synonyms
billion[long scale]]> quintillion gazillion million billion zillion jillion one million million million one million million 1000000000000
Etymology
Borrowed from French trillion, from French tri- (“three”) + -illion, equivalent to tri- + -illion.
The noun was coined by American basketball player Harvey Pollack, because of the way the numbers read across a basketball box score.
Webster’s 1913
- noun According to the French notation, which is used upon the Continent generally and in the United States, the number expressed by a unit with twelve ciphers annexed; a million millions; according to the English notation, the number produced by involving a million to the third power, or the number represented by a unit with eighteen ciphers annexed. See the Note under Numeration.
Etymology [F. trillion, formed from the pref. tri- in imitation of million a million. Cf. Billion.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “trillion”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details