The American billion system is, of course, stupid. Where million, billion and trillion should have qualities of 1-ness, 2-ness and 3-ness about them respectively, the American ones have 2-ness, 3-ness and 4-ness. The traditional British billion and friends are much more sensible.
Unfortunately, the American billion has shown itself to be the VHS to the British billion's Betamax, by convincingly winning the issue in spite of its technical inferiority. These days I don't expect to see the traditional British billion used in any major publication, and I'd probably use the American one myself if I needed to (although a lingering discomfort might encourage me to make it clear which billion I meant, or to move to scientific notation if that was sensible).
It annoys me, but it's a lost battle as far as I'm concerned...
Whilst I agree in principle, there is a need for "milliard" or similar - "thousand million" is talked about way way more frequently than "million million", and as such needs a short way to be expressed.
(To be honest I fail to see why one system is any more logical than the other. They both seem sensible enough from their own equally arbitrary starting positions.)
(Is that statement about first floors, or billions? I can certainly see your point when it comes to first floors - either is as sensible as the other and it's a question of what you're used to. But I instinctively recoil from any word derived from the prefix "bi" which doesn't obviously contain two of something...)
I don't think "mi" is a prefix; it was just a bit of the word "million" which could be conveniently discarded to make way for prefixes...
I can never quite remember how "million" came about in the first place. Common sense suggests there must be a link with Latin "mille" = "thousand", but declines to suggest how it managed to square itself along the way :-)
Million comes from French (around the 14th century), which borrowed it from Italian, where it was formed from mille "1000" + -one (augmentative suffix) and used to mean a thousand thousands.
My COED says of billion: From French billion, purposely formed in the 16th century to denote the second power of a million (by substituting bi- (prefix) for the initial letters), trillion and quadrillion being similarly formed to denote the third and fourth powers. The name appears not to have been adopted in English before the end of the 17th century [first quote is from Locke 1690]. Subsequently the application of the word was changed by French arithmeticians, figures being divided in numeration into groups of threes, instead of sixes, so that French billion, trillion denoted not the second and third powers of a million, but a thousand millions and a thousand thousand millions. In the 19th century, the US adopted the French convention, but Britain retained the original and etymological use (to which France reverted in 1948). Since 1951 the US value, a thousand millions, has been increasingly used in Britain, especially in technical writing and, more recently, in journalism...
So, it was the French who came up with the "unetymological" meaning, a very long time ago. The Americans and British simply selected different options from an existing variation, rather like aluminium and herb and -ize etc.
I got the impression I was already regarded as pedantic and nerdy using it to mean 1012 as a teenager in the mid-eighties. Books still used it that way (though I'm not sure in retrospect how many of them were recently published), but in common parlance, it had already become 109.
I think this was the first instance of British English succumbing before Vespuccian in my lifetime I observed. (The "ae" in "mediaeval" is another lost cause; I still use it myself, but when such authorities as Oxfnord University don't, you know it's on the way out.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-25 05:44 am (UTC)Unfortunately, the American billion has shown itself to be the VHS to the British billion's Betamax, by convincingly winning the issue in spite of its technical inferiority. These days I don't expect to see the traditional British billion used in any major publication, and I'd probably use the American one myself if I needed to (although a lingering discomfort might encourage me to make it clear which billion I meant, or to move to scientific notation if that was sensible).
It annoys me, but it's a lost battle as far as I'm concerned...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-25 05:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-25 07:30 am (UTC)(To be honest I fail to see why one system is any more logical than the other. They both seem sensible enough from their own equally arbitrary starting positions.)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-25 07:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-25 07:49 am (UTC)What does the prefix "mi" on "mi-llion mean, then, if a "bi-llion" is two llions (some kind of Welsh big cat, presumably)?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-25 09:03 am (UTC)I can never quite remember how "million" came about in the first place. Common sense suggests there must be a link with Latin "mille" = "thousand", but declines to suggest how it managed to square itself along the way :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-02-25 09:44 am (UTC)My COED says of billion:
From French billion, purposely formed in the 16th century to denote the second power of a million (by substituting bi- (prefix) for the initial letters), trillion and quadrillion being similarly formed to denote the third and fourth powers. The name appears not to have been adopted in English before the end of the 17th century [first quote is from Locke 1690]. Subsequently the application of the word was changed by French arithmeticians, figures being divided in numeration into groups of threes, instead of sixes, so that French billion, trillion denoted not the second and third powers of a million, but a thousand millions and a thousand thousand millions. In the 19th century, the US adopted the French convention, but Britain retained the original and etymological use (to which France reverted in 1948). Since 1951 the US value, a thousand millions, has been increasingly used in Britain, especially in technical writing and, more recently, in journalism...
So, it was the French who came up with the "unetymological" meaning, a very long time ago. The Americans and British simply selected different options from an existing variation, rather like aluminium and herb and -ize etc.
1-ness
Date: 2004-02-25 12:44 pm (UTC)Of lost and losing battles in the arena of English
Date: 2004-02-25 01:35 pm (UTC)I think this was the first instance of British English succumbing before Vespuccian in my lifetime I observed. (The "ae" in "mediaeval" is another lost cause; I still use it myself, but when such authorities as Oxfnord University don't, you know it's on the way out.)