A dillion? Btw I cannot even type the number a trillion. I think I write a billion instead. Good luck! And thanks for the info Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Thanks Janus58! I knew it had something to do with dillion Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Septillion, octillion, nonillion, decillion, undecillion, duodecillion... It's just a suffix on the Latin names for the cardinal numbers. Centillion is a word, so I assume that all the numbers before it are too. However, I doubt that there is a millillion; that would be rather awkward! However, when dealing with such large numbers, it's easier to use the googol, which is 10 to the 100th power: 33 sets of 3 zeros plus one extra. (I'm not going to bother figuring out how to write that in the Latin paradigm!) And of course a googolplex is 10 to the googolth power: one with a googol zeros. There is, apparently, nothing in the physical universe that would require a googolplex to describe it. However, it might be useable in quantum mechanics.
Words like Quadrillion, Quintillion, et cetera are seledom used. Some type of exponential notation is more common today.
There's also confusion because the US billion used to be different from the British billion. The British billion used to be a million million: 1,000,000,000,000 or 10^12. But the US billion was only a thousand million: 1,000,000,000 or 10^9. The British system made more sense, but cultural imperialism meant that the US billion ended up dominating, so that most people mean 10^9 when they say "billion" these days. A trillion for Americans is only 10^12: equal to the "old" British billion. An old British trillion would have been 10^24, a billion billion. And a British quadrillion would have been 10^48, whereas for Americans it's only 10^15.
I'm not sure what British usage was in the old days, but the Germans had a system that made sense. Million: 1,000,000 Milliard: 1,000,000,000 Billion: 1,000,000,000,000 Billiard: 1,000,000,000,000,000 Trillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 Trilliard: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Etc. The numbers were arranged so that the Latin prefix stood for groups of SIX zeros. In our system, it stands for groups of THREE zeros, but there's an extra set of three at the beginning.
Wow, that isn't how I thought the British system worked. Now I think neither system (American and British) makes sense! A million *should* equal 1,000 = 10^(3*1) A billion *should* equal 1,000,000 = 10^(3*2) A trillion *should* equal 1,000,000,000 = 10^(3*3) ... An octillion *should* equal 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = 10^(3*8)
Latin mill- (with the appropriate grammatical inflection for the particular sentence) means "thousand." Million- (again with the proper inflection) is mill with an augmentative suffix. You still see vestiges of this suffix, "-on," in Spanish, Italian and other Romance languages. Essentially it means something like "big thousand." So blame the Romans if you don't like the system. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
