On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 6:15 AM, John Sweeney <info(a)contrafusion.co.uk> wrote:
Yes, the meaning has changed from the original move in
the dance
Petronella. But lots of other words have had their meaning changed over
the years. "billion" used to mean a thousand million; but now (mainly
due to American influence!) it means a million million. "Acronym" used
to mean abbreviations that you could pronounce as a word, eg. radar,
laser, UNICEF; but now people just use it when they mean abbreviation.
Point taken, but you got the billion example backward. American usage
is a thousand million (9 zeroes),
British is a million millions (12 zeroes.)