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Each of these words translates to the American English or post-1974 British English word billion (10 9 in the short scale). The term billion originally meant 10 12 when introduced. [ 7 ] In long scale countries, milliard was defined to its current value of 10 9 , leaving billion at its original 10 12 value and so on for the larger numbers. [ 7 ]
one thousand million, or 1,000,000,000 (US: billion or 1,000,000,000) [92] Has for a long time been superseded by the short scale usage of billion (1,000,000,000) and was never as commonly used in the UK as it still is in mainland Europe (where the long scale is still used); when the long scale was used in Britain, "a thousand million" was more ...
Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions: 1,000,000,000 , i.e. one thousand million , or 10 9 (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 ...
US, Canada and modern British (short scale) Traditional British Traditional European (Peletier long scale) SI Symbol SI Prefix 1 1 10 6: Million Million Million M Mega-2 1 10 9: Billion Thousand million Milliard G Giga-3 2 10 12: Trillion Billion Billion T Tera-4 2 10 15: Quadrillion Thousand billion Billiard P Peta-5 3 10 18: Quintillion Trillion
The European Union is a supranational union composed of 27 member states. The total English-speaking population of the European Union and the United Kingdom combined (2012) is 256,876,220 [70] (out of a total population of 500,000,000, [71] i.e. 51%) including 65,478,252 native speakers and 191,397,968 non-native speakers, and would be ranked 2nd if it were included.
Many people have no direct experience of manipulating numbers this large, and many non-American readers may interpret billion as 10 12 (even if they are young enough to have been taught otherwise at school); moreover, usage of the "long" billion is standard in some non-English-speaking countries. For these reasons, defining the word may be ...
For example, English has about 450 million native speakers but, depending on the criterion chosen, can be said to have as many as two billion speakers. [4] There are also difficulties in obtaining reliable counts of speakers, which vary over time because of population change and language shift.
One billion years may be called an eon in astronomy or geology. Previously in British English (but not in American English), the word "billion" referred exclusively to a million millions (1,000,000,000,000). However, this is not common anymore, and the word has been used to mean one thousand million (1,000,000,000) for several decades.