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Origin and history of trillionth

trillionth(adj., n.)

"being last in a series of one trillion; one of a trillion parts;" 1820, from trillion + -th (1).

also from 1820

Entries linking to trillionth

trillion(n.)

1680s, from French trillion, from Italian trilione; see tri- + million. In the U.S., the fourth power of a thousand (one thousand billion, 1 followed by 12 zeroes); in Great Britain, the third power of a million (one million billion, 1 followed by 18 zeroes), which is the original and most systematic sense. Compare billion.

-th(1)

word-forming element making ordinal numbers (fourth, tenth, etc.), Old English -ða, from Proto-Germanic *-tha- (cognates: Gothic -da, -ta, Old High German -do, -to, Old Norse -di, -ti), from PIE *-to-, also *-eto-, *-oto-, suffix forming adjectives "marking the accomplishment of the notion of the base" [Watkins].

Cognate with Sanskrit thah, Greek -tos, Latin -tus; Sanskrit ta-, Lithuanian and Old Church Slavonic to, Greek to "the," Latin talis "such;" Greek tēlikos "so old, of such an age," Old Church Slavonic toli "so, to such a degree," toliku "so much," Russian toliko "only;" also see -ed.

Physicists coined zeroth by 1896, in describing functions, "coming before the first."

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