369: Ascending -illion (numbers) Dec 12, 2015

Numbers are naturally infinite, but words are not, i.e. they come from somewhere. Everyone knows, 'million', and 'billion', but not everyone knows–or would like to memorize–numbers that are conceptually difficult. Nevertheless there is a relatively simple rule to figure these cardinal numbers out. After 'million', which comes from the Latin word for 'thousand', 'mille' and then the suffix 'one', we have the next new number, 'billion' from the prefix 'bi' meaning two'. After that, 'trillion' is the third new number from the prefix, 'tri' meaning 'three', and then 'quadrillion' from 'quad' and so on with 'quintillion', 'sextillion' and 'septillion' &c.