How much is a billion?

Factual Questions
1

Websters says it’s a million million. A banker says it’s a thousand million. Either way I’m a long way from billionaire!

2

One thousand million is one billion (1,000,000,000). A million million is a trillion (1,000,000,000,000). BTW, the United States still owes something like 3 trillion dollars to private investors and foreign governments.

3

My copy of Websters says it’s a thousand million.
You need a new dictionary my friend.

4

From The American Heritage Electronic Dictionary:

5

Wood Thrush beat me to it.

In America, a billion is 1,000,000,000.
In Britain, a billion is 1,000,000,000,000.

Yet another example of two nations separated by a common language.*
*source of paraphrase lost to the murky depths of my memory.

6

I think the British version is rapidly passing from the scene. They have a milliard to replace what we call a billion. By extension, they would need a billiard that isn’t a ball to go where we put a trillion. They’d need a trilliard to represent a thousand billion so that a trillion would be a million billion, and a, umm, quadrilliard to represent a thousand trillion so that a quadrillion would be a million trillion, and so forth.

I think you’ll find that the only lists of nomenclature to cover numbers by proper name above a trillion that you’ll run across use the American system, and you rarely see “trilliard” or “quadrilliard” in print under normal circumstances.
Alta Vista reports 7986 hits for the word “quadrillion” and 46 hits for “trilliard”.

7

'Websters says it’s a million million.

Only when you use the British edition.

8

STSTAFFer Dex on the names of really large numbers.

9

The word “milliard” was vary rarely used and now is probably even rarer. From all reports, when the British use the word “billion”, they mean the same thing as Americans do. I’m sure there are still a few old timers that aren’t comfortable with this usage, though.

The thing I’m not sure about is the trillion. It’s not a number that comes up much (they don’t have our budget) so it’s possible that they haven’t borrowed the American meaning of the word.