People just realising 'billions' means different things for Americans and Brits

07 March 2024 , 10:50

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People were baffled to learn about the difference (stock photo) (Image: Getty Images/Tetra images RF)

Not even numbers are safe from meaning different things on opposing sides of the pond.

If you've ever had a chat with someone from the US, you'll likely have started comparing things that are different over there than they are on home soil. There are obvious things like spellings that are noticeably different, but then there are slightly more bizarre observations - like the fact that electric kettles aren't common in US kitchens.

But did you know that even our numbering system is different? That's right, when it comes to counting things in "billions", the UK and the US have historically used two completely different systems.

So what is one billion? These days, people in the UK have adopted the idea that the term is used to denote a thousand million, or 1,000,000,000. This is the way people in the US have always referred to billions, but for us Brits, it's a relatively new way of using the word.

That's because up until the mid-70s, we had a different meaning for a billion - a million million, or 1,000,000,000,000. According to the Statistical Literacy Guide: "In official UK statistics the term is now used to denote one thousand million – 1,000,000,000. Historically, however, in the UK the term billion meant one million million – 1,000,000,000,000 - but in the United States, the term was used to refer to one thousand million.

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"The US value had, however, become increasingly used in Britain and Prime Minister Harold Wilson confirmed in a written reply in 1974 that the meaning of 'billion' would be thousand-million, in conformity with international usage."

To make matters more complicated, neither counting system was developed by the UK or the US. In fact, both systems were created in France, and for some time French people used both systems interchangeably. Speaking on The Naked Scientist podcast, maths expert Tim Revell said: "I think in France they also use the same system that we all use now but they created them both and then, for a while, they used both systems but they distinguished between them by calling them the long scale system and the short scale system."

The system now used internationally uses one trillion to denote a million million - or one thousand billion - which used to mean a million million million in the old UK format, if that wasn't complicated enough. Numbers then go up from there - a quadrillion is one thousand trillion, and a quintillion is one thousand quadrillion.

Zahna Eklund