entry
trillion
/ˈtrɪljən/A thousand billion; an extremely large number
From French, ultimately an Indo-European numeral element tri (three).
from French trillion
+1 more sourcefrom Italian trilione ; see tri- + million . In the U.S., the fourth power of a thousand (one thousand billion, 1...
from French trillion
+1 more sourcefrom French trillion
+1 more sourcefrom French trillion
+1 more sourceWord Ancestry
from French trillion
+1 more sourcefrom Italian trilione ; see tri- + million . In the U.S., the fourth power of a thousand (one thousand billion, 1...
from French trillion
+1 more sourcefrom French trillion
+1 more sourcefrom French trillion
+1 more sourceNumbers became linguistic architecture in Renaissance Europe: once million existed, speakers began stacking familiar pieces onto it, producing forms such as Italian trilione and French trillion. The “tri-” does not mean three ordinary objects; it points to a third power in the old naming system, which helped create the original long-scale sense of 10¹⁸—one million million million. English adopted the word in the 1680s, but then the Atlantic divide made the number itself slippery: American usage settled on 10¹², while Britain historically used 10¹⁸ before largely adopting the American meaning. The suffix also escaped serious arithmetic and became comic raw material: zillion, first recorded in 1916, means merely “an enormous unspecified number.” And in basketball, Harvey Pollack popularized “a trillion” as a joke for a player whose box-score line looked like a one followed by thirteen zeros—proof that even a gigantic number can describe statistical nothingness.
The Story
Numbers became linguistic architecture in Renaissance Europe: once million existed, speakers began stacking familiar pieces onto it, producing forms such as Italian trilione and French trillion. The “tri-” does not mean three ordinary objects; it points to a third power in the old naming system, which helped create the original long-scale sense of 10¹⁸—one million million million. English adopted the word in the 1680s, but then the Atlantic divide made the number itself slippery: American usage settled on 10¹², while Britain historically used 10¹⁸ before largely adopting the American meaning. The suffix also escaped serious arithmetic and became comic raw material: zillion, first recorded in 1916, means merely “an enormous unspecified number.” And in basketball, Harvey Pollack popularized “a trillion” as a joke for a player whose box-score line looked like a one followed by thirteen zeros—proof that even a gigantic number can describe statistical nothingness.
Modern Usage
In basketball, recording no statistics despite briefly entering a game
Popularized by: Harvey Pollack
Notable References
- An Ohio State benchwarmer achieving a “trillion” in a blowout game
Kin & Kindred
From 'tri'·three
Derived Terms
English words from this root
From '-illion'·a very large cardinal number, historically built from million
Derived Terms
English words from this root
Sources
Free Dictionary
Urban Dictionary
Wikipedia
Wiktionary