Milliard
/ˈmɪl.jɑːrd/noun
A thousand million, especially in British usage; in some contexts, a billion.
Did you know?Milliard entered English through French, where it was built as a scale-word for large powers of a million, and in older European number systems it could mean 10^9 rather than the American billion.
Etymological Timeline
Late 16th Century
French
milliard
“A thousand millions; a large number formed on the million scale.”
16th Century
Italian
miliardo
“A thousand millions.”
Late Medieval Latin
Latin
miliardus
“A large number on the million scale, formed in continental number systems.”
Latin
Latin
mille
“Thousand.”
Proto-Indo-European
PIE
*sm̥ḱóm̥tóm?
“No; the word ultimately belongs to the ancient numeral root for 'thousand' through Latin mille, though the deeper pre-Latin origin is uncertain.”
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