quintillion

American  

[kwin-til-yuhn] / kwɪnˈtɪl jən /

noun

quintillions, plural quintillion plural

1. a cardinal number represented in the U.S. by 1 followed by 18 zeros, and in Great Britain by 1 followed by 30 zeros.

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adjective

1. amounting to one quintillion in number.

quintillion British  

/ kwɪnˈtɪljən /

noun

1. US and Canadian word: nonillion.  (in Britain, France, and Germany) the number represented as one followed by 30 zeros (10 ³⁰ )

2. Former Brit word: trillion.  (in the US and Canada) the number represented as one followed by 18 zeros (10 ¹⁸ )

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• quintillionth
  noun
• quintillionth
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• quintillion
  plural
• quintillions
  plural

Etymology

Origin of quintillion

1665–75; < Latin quīnt ( us ) fifth + -illion (as in million )

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

quintillion quintillions

“It’s not going to be 9 quintillion to 1, but it will still be billions to 1.”

From MarketWatch ● Mar. 18, 2026

These exascale machines can perform a quintillion calculations per second and occupy thousands of square feet -- recalling the massive size of the earliest computers.

From Science Daily ● Dec. 22, 2025

Europe recently unveiled a rival, Jupiter, housed in western Germany, also able to perform at least one quintillion calculations per second, which is equivalent to about a million smartphones.

From Barron's ● Nov. 26, 2025

There are more than 10 quintillion insects on Earth, 200 million for every human.

From Science Magazine ● Mar. 29, 2024

These breed with great rapidity under favourable conditions: one by the end of the year will be accountable, according to Linnaeus, for the enormous number of a quintillion of its species.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 10 "Echinoderma" to "Edward" by Various

The magazine impresario, Cohen, wants him to find the “perfect white” to give a sense of order and harmony to the quintillions of discrete bits of data stored within the building.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026

Interplanetary space contains just a few dozen particles in each cubic centimeter — in comparison, the air we breathe has tens of quintillions of molecules per cubic centimeter.

From Salon ● Jun. 3, 2025

"The right answer emerges every 10 minutes, and the rest of the data, quintillions of them, are computations that serve no further purpose and are therefore immediately discarded," de Vries says.

From Science Daily ● Nov. 29, 2023

Powerful computers race one another to process transactions, solving complex mathematical problems that require quintillions of numerical guesses a second.

From New York Times ● Mar. 22, 2022

And a positronic brain, which with ten pounds of matter and a few quintillions of positrons runs the whole show.

From "I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov