On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 6:15 AM, John Sweeney <[email protected]> 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.)
