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I think it should join "billion" in never being ever used again due to its ambiguity.

• kimbernator 2y ago
  It just doesn't have the same ring to call someone a "milliardare"
• Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
  How is "billion" ambiguous? Does it mean something other than 1,000,000,000? EDIT: Apparently in some cultures, it means a million million, ie, 1,000,000,000,000, or what most people would call "trillion". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion
  • paulddraper 2y ago
    For the last several decades, every English speaking country has used the short billion (1e9).
    • jamiek88 2y ago
      Yep, even the BBC surrendered to the Americanism.
      • seabass-labrax 2y ago
        According to Wikipedia's summary of the situation, the French are to blame for the ambiguity - no surprises there! ;) But if we're going to avoid Americanisms, the better way is simply to use the word 'milliard', which makes perfect, unambiguous sense in any language.
        • lupire 2y ago
          Except that it's a terrible word because milli means thousand, and ard just means a grammatical modification. So all that accomplishes is conflating thousand with million with billion. (Of course "million" is already a conflation of "thousand"!)
          • seabass-labrax 2y ago
            Oh, good point... Right, back to the drawing board - how about "kilocount" for a thousand, "megacount" for a million, and "gigacounts" for a (short) billion? The prefixes were apparently resurrected from the Greek for use in the metric system, but haven't had any other contradictory meanings as far as I can tell. I know I'm mixing up the Greek and Latin roots with "-count", but "kiloarithmos" is two syllables too many!
• sunaookami 2y ago
  It's impressive how many "journalists" get this wrong when copying news written in English.