Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 1926

[Included here are only a very few entries that relate to numbers -ed.]

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billion. It should be remembered that this word does not mean in American use (which follows the French) what it means in British. For us [British] it means the second power of a million, i.e. a million millions (1,000,000,000,000); for Americans it means a thousand multiplied by itself twice, or a thousand millions (1,000,000,000), what we call a milliard. Since billion in our sense is useless except to astronomers, it is a pity that we do not conform.

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city. in common usage is applied to any large and important town, but in Great Britain is strictly an honorary title held by ancient custom (especially in the case of episcopal sees) or granted by Royal Charter, and not necessarily implying any greater powers of local government than those of a borough. Cities vary in size and importance from Birmingham with a population of over a million to Wells with one of under 7,000, and in antiquity from Oxford, which has been a city from time immemorial, to Cambridge, which was made one in 1951. The most famous, the City of London, is also one of the smallest, with an area of one square mile and a resident population of about 5,000

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half. 1. A foot and a h., One and a h. feet. In all such mixed statements of integers and fractions (7 1/2 mill., 3 1/2 doz., 27 1/2 lb., etc.), the older and better form of speech is the first — a foot and a h., seven millions and a quarter, etc. In writing and printing, the obvious convenience of the second form, with figures instead of words, and all figures naturally placed together, has made it almost universal. It is a pity that speech should have followed suit; the 1 1/2 f. of writing should be translated in reading aloud into 'a foot and a half', and when, as in literary contexts, words and not figures are to be used, the old-fashioned seven millions and a quarter should not be changed into the seven and a quarter millions that is only due to figure-writing. But perhaps the cause is already lost; we certainly cannot say a time and a half as large instead of one and a half times. For sing. or pl. after one and a half use pl. noun and sing. vb. One and a half months is allowed for completion.

2. The intruding "a". President Eisenhower had a private meeting which lasted a half an hour. / The industry could have produced a half a million tons more. / The six o' clock news follows in a half a minute. This vulgarism seems to be getting curiously common.

3. H. as much again is a phrase liable to misunderstanding or misuse. The train fares in France were raised this year 25% and have again been increased by half as much again. That should mean by a further 37% making altogether 62%; the reader is justified, though possibly mistaken, in suspecting that 12% (half as much, not half as much again) was meant, making altogether 37% instead of 62%. The phrase is better avoided in favour of explicit figures when such doubts can arise. See more ⁷ for similar ambiguities.

4. Half-world — demi-motide. See GALLICISMS.

5. Better half wife. Sec WORN-OUT HUMOUR.

6. Half-weekly, -yearly, etc. For the superiority of these to bi-weekly, bi-annual, etc., see BI-.

7. Halfpennyworth is best written ha’p’orth and pronounced hd'pdth but hd'pniworth is now often heard.

8. H. of it is, h. of them are, rotteti. See NUMBER 6 (b).

9. For half-breed, half-caste, see MULATTO I, 4.

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milliard means a thousand millions; it is chiefly a French term, though perhaps advancing in general currency. In France it is the equivalent in ordinary use of the mathematical French billion, which, like the American, differs from the English in being a thousand million, not a million million.

million. 1. A m. and a quarter, two millions and a half, rather than one and a quarter million{s) and two and a half millions; see half.

2. Amongst the eight million are a few hundred to whom this does not apply. Here million and hundred are better than millions and hundreds; but He died worth three millions rather than million; this because ‘a million’ is an established noun (as distinguished from a mere numeral) in the sense £1,000,000, but not in the sense a million people.

3. Forty-five million people rather than forty-five millions of people (on the analogy of dozen, score, hundred, and thousand); but, with a few and many, millions of is perhaps the more usual form.

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myriad is generally used of a great but indefinite number; but it is well to remember that its original sense, still occasionally effective, is ten thousand.

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progression * Arithmetical n. and geometrical n. These are in constant demand to express a rapid rate of increase, which is not involved in either of them, and is not necessarily even suggested by a. p. Those who use the expressions should bear in mind (i) that you cannot determine the nature of the progression from two terms whose relative place in the series is unknown, (2) that every rate of increase that could be named is slower than some rates of a. p. and of g. p., and faster than some others, and consequently (3) that the phrases ‘better than a, p., than g. p.’, ‘almost in a. p., g. p.’, are wholly meaningless.

In 1903 there were ten thousand "paying guests", last year [1906] fifty thousand. The rate of increase "is better, it will be observed" than a. p. Better, certainly, than a. p. with increment i, of which the fourth annual term would have been 10,003; but as certainly worse than a. p. with increment a million, of which the fourth term would have been 3,010,000; and neither better nor worse than, but a case of, a. p. with increment 13,333 J. The writer meant a. p. with annual increment 10,000; but as soon as we see what he meant to say we see also that it was not worth saying, since it tells us no more than that, as we knew before, fifty thousand is greater than forty thousand.

Even g. p. may be so slow that to raise 10,000 in three years to as little as the 10,003 mentioned above is merely a matter of fixing the increment ratio low enough. Neither a. p. nor g. p. necessarily implies rapid progress. The point of contrast between them is that one involves growth or decline at a constant pace, and the other at an increasing pace. Hence the famous sentence in Malthus about population and subsistence, the first increasing in a geometrical and the second in an arithmetical ratio, which perhaps started the phrases on their career as POPULARIZED TECHNICALITIES. Of the following extracts, the first is a copy of Malthus, the second a possibly legitimate use, according to what it is meant to convey, and the third the usual absurdity: The healthy portion of the population is increasing by a. p. and the feeble-minded by g. p. / Scientific discovery is likely to proceed by g. p. / As the crude prejudice against the soldier's uniform vanished, and as ex-Regular officers joined the Volunteers, and Volunteers passed on to the Army, the idea that every man owes willing service to his country began to spread in an almost geometrical ratio.

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