trillion

«trillion» in Mova's school dictionary: a million millions: 1,000,000,000,000, or 10 to the power… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun and number (a trillion, trillions; two trillion); adjective (trillionth)

meaning for a pupil

1) A trillion is a million millions: 1,000,000,000,000, or 10 to the power of 12 — a 1 followed by 12 zeros. tree →

2) (informal) «Trillions» means an enormous, uncountable number: «I've told you trillions of times!» tree →

sense in the lessons

In maths lessons place value grows: thousand (3 zeros), million (6), billion (9), trillion (12). Trillions come up in science and money: the human body has about 30 trillion cells; there are hundreds of billions to trillions of trees on Earth; whole countries' economies are measured in trillions of dollars or pounds. Phrases: «a trillion dollars», «trillions of stars», «one in a trillion».

examples

• A trillion is a thousand billion. tree →
• The human body is made of trillions of cells. tree →
• Write one trillion in digits: 1,000,000,000,000. tree →
• Counting to a trillion, one number a second, would take over 30,000 years. tree →
• Some countries' economies are worth trillions of dollars. tree →
• There are trillions of tiny bacteria in your gut. tree →
• I've asked you a trillion times to tidy your room! (informal) tree →

note

After a number, «trillion» has no s: «three trillion», but «trillions of». Today in English a trillion = 10^12 (a million million). Trap: long ago in Britain «billion» meant a million million and «trillion» a million million million; old books may use these. In some other languages (like French «billion») the word means 10^12, so check translations. Maths: 1 trillion = 1,000 billion = 1,000,000 million.

In the corpora

• Germs include bacteria, viruses and fungi; most bacteria are harmless or helpful, and your gut holds trillions of useful ones.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «trillion» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.