Etymology

-illion

Today it means: Combined with Latin prefixes for names of integers in order to form names of powers of a million. Full definition →

English millionbf. ← Middle English milioun
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The story

  1. Middle Englishmilioun
  2. Englishmillionbf.
  3. English today-illion

Back-formation from million, then used in billion, trillion, quadrillion, each from French, ultimately from Italian mille (“thousand”) and the augmentative suffix -one. -illion was segmented from million as if mi- was a prefix, and -illion the stem.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.