originally Latin, and entered English around the end of the 17th century. Later, French arithmeticians changed the words' meanings, adopting the short scale definition whereby three zeros rather than six were added at each step, so a billion came to denote a thousand million , a trillion became a million million , and so on. This new convention was adopted in the United States in the 19th century, but Britain retained the original long scale use. France, in turn, reverted to the long scale in 1948.

In Britain, however, under the influence