quadrillion
(kwəˈdrɪljən)
[a. F. quadrillion (16th c.), f. quadri- + (m)illion: see billion.]
a. In Great Britain originally: The fourth power of a million, represented by 1 followed by twenty-four ciphers. b. In U.S. (and increasingly in Great Britain): The fifth power of a thousand, or 1 followed by fifteen ciphers.
| 1674 S. Jeake Arith. (1696) 14 Others..call the twenty-fifth place Quadrillion. 1706 W. Jones Syn. Palmar. Matheseos 8 Then the 4th point from Units stands under Quadrillions. 1795–8 T. Maurice Hindostan (1820) I. i. iv. 142 Two quadrillions..of lunar years. 1891 Pall Mall G. 4 Mar. 3/2, I wonder how many quadrillions, quintillions, sextillions there are of them [locusts]. 1975 Offshore Sept. 246/2 Southern areas of the North Sea off the northeast coast of England produced a record 129 quadrillion BTU's last year. 1976 Sci. Amer. Jan. 21/1 The ERDA projections are expressed in terms of quads, or quadrillions (1015) of British thermal units (B.t.u.). 1977 Ibid. Apr. 71/1 When n is 31, the total number of possible binary trees is 14,544,636,039,226,909, and each of these 14 quadrillion trees will be optimum for some set of assumed frequencies for the 31 words. |
Hence quaˌdrillioˈnaire (after millionaire), one who possesses a quadrillion of the standard unit of money in any country. quaˈdrillionth a., the ordinal numeral corresponding to quadrillion; n., a quadrillionth part (Funk's Stand. Dict. 1893).
| a 1876 M. Collins Pen Sketches (1879) I. 172 A millionaire (we shall soon have billionaires, trillionaires, quadrillionaires). 1882 Sala Amer. Revis. (1885) 174 Silver-mine millionnaires and Wall-street quadrillionnaires. 1976 New Yorker 3 May 30/3 Further advances..should make it possible to record even faster chemical reactions—reactions that take place in femtoseconds, or quadrillionths of a second. |