Once a representation of something beyond our comprehension, the word trillion has now sealed its place in common parlance. As U.S. politicians were trying to find budget savings of $1.2 trillion, European leaders were topping up their rescue fund to the tune of 1 trillion euros. "'Trillion' does seem to have much more currency than it used to, probably because of the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the budget and deficit," said John Allen Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Temple. "This doesn't mean that most people have a visceral grasp of its size."