trillion

Pluraltrillions

1. 1
   numeralAustralia

   A quantity equal to a million million, or 1 followed by twelve zeros (10¹²).

   Global plastic production has reached several trillion pounds since the 1950s.

   The company's transactions added up to three trillion yen last year.

   Note

   The short-scale trillion is a thousand billion. In the American, Australian and modern British count, each new -illion multiplies the last by a thousand. With a figure in front, the word stays singular, as in $34 trillion, while trillions of names a vague multitude of dollars or souls. A speaker of the long scale would call this same amount a billion.

2. 2
   numeralcolloquial

   An indefinitely large quantity, used loosely to suggest a huge amount without counting it exactly.

   Fans sent the singer a trillion messages after the surprise announcement.

   It feels like there are a trillion things left to do before the wedding.

   Similarmillion, billion

   Note

   Here the word is hyperbole rather than arithmetic, a way of saying "more than anyone could count." It usually appears as trillions of or a trillion plus a plural noun, and it belongs to conversation, not reports. Gazillion and zillion do the same job while dropping any pretense of being real numbers. Trillion keeps a straight face, so make sure the context shows you are exaggerating.

3. 3
   numeraldatedAustraliaBritish

   In older British usage, a million million millions: 1 followed by eighteen zeros, equal to 10¹⁸.

   Nineteenth-century British texts measured astronomical distances in trillions of miles.

   The Edwardian treatise reckoned the cosmos to contain a trillion stars and more.

   Similarquintillion

   Note

   The long-scale trillion is the older British and Australian value. It is also the one its French tri-, "three," fits most neatly, since it is a million multiplied by itself three times. Today's count calls the amount a quintillion. A dated British figure in trillions is therefore a million times larger than the modern thousand-billion trillion, so check which scale a text uses before converting.

4. 4
   nounslangcountable

   In basketball, a box-score line in which a player logs minutes played but no other recorded statistics.

   She picked up a trillion after a brief appearance in the fourth quarter.

   The backup guard earned a trillion despite three minutes on the floor.

   Note

   Basketball's joke statistic was coined by Harvey Pollack. Read across a box-score line, a player's minutes followed by nothing but zeros look like one enormous number. The word only borrows the numeral's spelling for the gag. It is a countable slang noun, plural trillions, and its humor is dry, since it rewards a player for appearing on the floor and doing nothing that gets recorded.

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