trillion

• enPR: trĭl'yən, IPA^(key): /ˈtɹɪljən/

• Audio (US):

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• Audio (General Australian):

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• Rhymes: -ɪljən

Borrowed from French trillion, from French tri- (“three”) + -illion, equivalent to tri- +‎ -illion.

trillion (plural trillions)

2. Either of two large amounts:
   2. (US, modern British, Australia, short scale) A million (times a) million: 1 followed by twelve zeros, 10¹².

      Synonym: billion (long scale)

      • 2012, BioWare, Mass Effect 3: From Ashes (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, PC, scene: Normandy SR-2:

        Javik: Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls and ask the ghosts if honor matters. Their silence is your answer.

      • 2024 January 3, Hanna Ziady and Tami Luhby, “US national debt hits record $34 trillion”, in CNN‎^[1]:

        Data published by the Treasury Department showed that “total public debt outstanding” rose to $34.001 trillion on December 29.

      • 2025 March 7, Kayla Tausche, “Dismantling of Education Department puts future of trillions of dollars in student loans in question”, in CNN‎^[2]:

        As President Donald Trump prepares to order the dismantling of the Department of Education, the financial arm of the agency – which makes loans directly to borrowers and manages trillions of dollars in student debt – faces an uncertain future, with steep staff cuts and lack of communication exacerbating the uncertainty, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former department employees.

   4. (dated British, Australia, long scale) A million (times a) million (times a) million: 1 followed by eighteen zeros, 10¹⁸.

      Synonym: quintillion

4. (colloquial, hyperbolic) An unspecified very large number.

   Near-synonyms: gazillion; see also Thesaurus:zillion

   There were trillions of people at the concert.

• → Welsh: triliwn

• (short scale) Previous: billion. Next: quadrillion
• (long scale) Previous: billiard. Next: trilliard
• (SI prefix): tera-

Coined by Harvey Pollack, because of the way the numbers read across a basketball box score.

trillion (plural trillions)

1. (basketball, slang) A statistic formed by a player playing some number of minutes, but recording no stats.

From tri- (“three”) +‎ -illion, from million; i.e. a million million million.

Coined by Jehan Adam in 1475 as trimillion. Rendered as tryllion by Nicolas Chuquet in 1484, in his article “Triparty en la science des nombres”.

• IPA^(key): /tʁi.ljɔ̃/

• Audio:

  (file)

trillion m (plural trillions)

1. quintillion (10¹⁸)
2. (dated) trillion (10¹²)

• billion, coined at same time

• → Catalan: trilió

• “trillion”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

trillion m (plural trillions)

1. trillion, 10¹⁸
   • 1520, Étienne de La Roche, L'arismethique novellement composee, page 6:

     ung trillion vault mille milliers de billions

     a trillion is equivalent to a thousand thousands of billions

trillion (Cyrillic spelling триллион)

1. (10¹²)