Of course, it's only four quadrillion in the old British long-form. Fun fact: before the United States came along and screwed everything up (what else is new, am I right?), most of the world called 1,000,000,000,000 (what we would call a trillion) a "billion", and our billion (1,000,000,000) was simply "a thousand million." Then they had a thousand billion, equal to our quadrillion, and their trillion was the same as our quintillion, and so on.
In the old long-form, a million-million was called a "bi-million," or "billion." A million-million-million, then, was a "tri-million" or "trillion." This actually makes insanely good sense. You just go up by a factor of 10^6 each time. 10^(6*1) was a (mono-)million, 10^(6*2) was a bi-million, 10^(6*3) a tri-million, and so on. In America, we go up by 10^3's instead, which is fine, I guess, but then for some reason we also skip the first one. The numbers 10^(3*2), 10^(3*3), and 10^(3*4) all have rhyming "-illion" names with number prefixes, but rather than the prefixes for 2, 3, and 4 (which would make sense, for how many groups of three zeros there are after the "one" in each one) we use the prefixes for 1, 2, and 3 for some reason, instead. So why do we do it like this? Well, no one really knows. Far as anyone can tell, someone just made a mistake in transcription somewhere along the way, and either nobody ever caught on, or they just didn't want to admit their mistake, and so we all just rolled with it until it was too late to change back.
Another word for thousand-million is a "milliard." There is also a "billiard" equal to a thousand (long) billions, and so on. "Milliard" can be used when "thousand-million" is not desired, to still avoid the ambiguity associated with "billion." On the international stock market, for example, 1,000,000,000 units (shares, dollars, etc.) is referred to as a "yard" -- short for "milliard" -- for this very reason.
I' have to wait until I get the new one.
Thanks Kpr!
