Billion
Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions:
- long scale. This number is the historical sense of the word and remains the established sense of the word in other European languages. Though displaced by the short scale definition relatively early in US English, it remained the most common sense of the word in Britain until the 1950s and still remains in occasional use there.[3]
American English adopted the short scale definition from the French (it enjoyed usage in France at the time, alongside the long-scale definition).[4] 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.[5]
Other countries use the word billion (or words cognate to it) to denote either the long scale or short scale billion.
Milliard, another term for one thousand million, is extremely rare in English, but words similar to it are very common in other European languages.[6][7] For example, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Hebrew (Asia), Hungarian, Italian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese (although the expression mil milhões — a thousand million — is far more common), Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish (although the expression mil millones — a thousand million — is far more common), Swedish, Tajik, Turkish, Ukrainian and Uzbek — 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 a thousand times larger than the modern English billion.
History
According to the
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."[5]
See also
References
- ^ "How many is a billion?". Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on December 17, 2012. Retrieved November 11, 2023.
- BBC News Magazine. Retrieved November 11, 2023.
- ^ a b "billion". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Retrieved November 11, 2023.
- ^ doi:10.1093/OED/2412059837. Retrieved November 11, 2023. (Subscription or participating institution membershiprequired.)
- ^ a b Cracknell, Richard; Bolton, Paul (January 2009). "Statistical literacy guide: What is a billion? And other units" (PDF). House of Commons Library. Retrieved November 11, 2023.
- Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya(in Catalan). El miliard, el bilió, el 'billion'. Retrieved November 11, 2023.
- ^ "Confusions amb el "billion" i el "trillion" anglesos". ésAdir (in Catalan). Catalan Audiovisual Corporation. Retrieved November 11, 2023.