trillion

American  

[tril-yuhn] / ˈtrɪl jən /

noun

• trillions,
  plural
• trillion
  plural

1. a cardinal number represented in the U.S. by 1 followed by 12 zeros, and in Great Britain by 1 followed by 18 zeros.

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adjective

1. amounting to one trillion in number.

trillion British  

/ ˈtrɪljən /

noun

1. the number represented as one followed by twelve zeros (10 ¹² ); a million million

2. (formerly, in Britain) the number represented as one followed by eighteen zeros (10 ¹⁸ ); a million million million

3. (often plural) an exceptionally large but unspecified number

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determiner

1. 1. amounting to a trillion

      a trillion stars

   2. ( as pronoun )

      there are three trillion

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• trillionth
  noun

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• trillion
  plural
• trillions
  plural

Etymology

Origin of trillion

1680–90; < French, equivalent to tr ( i )- tri- + ( m ) illion million

Compare meaning

How does trillion compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

• billion vs. trillion

Explanation

A trillion is 1,000,000,000,000, also known as 10 to the 12th power, or one million million. It’s such a large number it’s hard to get your head around it, so sometimes trillion just means “wow, a lot.” A trillion is bigger than a million, more than a billion, it’s 1,000,000,000,000 (and even or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 in some countries). (Yes, those are 18 zeroes in that last one.) Either way, this is such a large number that it's hard to imagine. Maybe that's why people often use this word in a looser sense, as in "I have a trillion reasons why I like this band!" That meaning is similar to gazillion, bazillion, and zillion, which aren't real numbers.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

trillion trillions

The new budget would still far outstrip the EU's last one, which was worth around 1.2 trillion euros.

From Barron's ● Oct. 10, 2026

Chip titan Nvidia this week hit a record high and closed in on the $6 trillion market capitalisation.

From Barron's ● Oct. 9, 2026

QNB Group said that net profit for the first nine months of the year rose 4% to 13.3 billion Qatari riyals, while loans and advances increased 6% from a year earlier to 1.061 trillion riyals.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026

GDP reached an annualized $32.56 trillion in the second quarter ending Sept. 30.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 9, 2026

The subprime mortgage market was generating half a trillion dollars’ worth of new loans a year, but the circle of people redistributing the risk that the entire market would collapse was tiny.

From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis

Environmental groups credit them for saving trillions of gallons of gasoline.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 28, 2026

“There are trillions and trillions of new images being generated now by AI,” Ingold said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 28, 2026

Routine tasks such as mopping floors, spraying countertops, and wiping surfaces with scented products generate billions or trillions of particles, with the total depending on the product.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 26, 2026

To be sure, the space is still a rounding error compared with the trillions of dollars in U.S.-listed ETFs overall.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 18, 2026

All those unseen billions and trillions of charged particles, and possibly, she thought, of Dust, conjured a radiating glow out of the upper atmosphere.

From "The Golden Compass" by Philip Pullman