The alt.usage.english FAQ   

• "billions and billions"

  (Phrase Origins)
  
  Carl Sagan (1934-1996), in his last book _Billions & Billions_ (Random House, 1997, ISBN 0-679-41160-7), admitted that in the TV series _Cosmos_, first aired in 1980, he "pronounced 'billions' with a fairly plosive 'b'" to distinguish it from "millions". But he asserted that he never used the phrase "billions and billions" in that show, and that the public association of him with that phrase is due to a parody that Johnny Carson did of Sagan on _The Tonight Show_.
  
  Source: [Mark Israel, 'Phrase Origins: "billions and billions"', The alt.usage.english FAQ file,(line 4470), (29 Sept 1997)]
  
  
  
  

Navigation

This is a temporary page for the development of aue FAQ material and the testing of scripts.

Please do not bookmark this page.