Yard

What is ‘Yard’

A financial term meaning one billion. Yard is derived from the term “milliard” which is used in some European languages and is equivalent to the number one billion used in American English. It is equal to 10y (10 to the ninth power), or the number one followed by nine zeros: 1,000,000,000. If someone were to purchase one billion U.S. dollars, he or she could refer to the purchase as “a yard of U.S. dollars.”

Explaining ‘Yard’

The slang term yard refers to one billion and may offer a concise method of naming the figure which cannot be confused with the rhyming “million” and “trillion.” Different terminology is used throughout the world for identifying large numbers. For example, one billion can be called one yard, one milliard, or one thousand million, depending on the country.

Further Reading

  • The economics of urban yard space: An “implicit-market” model for housing attributes – www.sciencedirect.com [PDF]
  • LSY: documentation for a spreadsheet tool to evaluate log-sort yard economics – www.fs.usda.gov [PDF]
  • Causality, chaos, explanation and prediction in economics and finance – books.google.com [PDF]
  • Effect of farm yard manure treated with jeevamrutha on yield attributes, yield and economics of sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.). – www.cabdirect.org [PDF]