Trillion: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

English usage

In Brazil and most English-speaking countries, a trillion is 10¹² or 1 000 000 000 000 (a one followed by twelve zeros) or one million million or (1 million)². It is a thousand billion (English usage) or one thousandth of a quadrillion (English usage). While the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand traditionally employed the continental European usage, some years ago they largely switched to the more common English usage of 10¹².

Non-English Usage

In many continental European languages, a trillion (or its translated equivalent) is 10¹⁸ or 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 (a one followed by eighteen zeros) or 1 million million million or (1 million)³.

The history of trillion is described in the billion article.

For reasons of the ambiguity described above, it is preferable to avoid the usage of the term trillion and instead use the corresponding millions (million million and million million million) or powers of ten (10^12 and 10^18) or SI prefixes (tera- and exa-) as appropriate.

However, many people use the word trillion to mean an unspecified large number. Then it falls into the same category as umpteen and gazillion.