[General] eyelash under a trillion dollars

[lisa***]

Good day!

I listened to a speech on TED about lie spotting.
It says “Deception can have dramatic costs.
That’s an eyelash under a trillion dollars.”

What does an “eyelash under a trillion dollars” mean?

I think it simply means “it costs a trillion dollars”,
I want to know the idiomatic meaning of eyelash in the phrase and
Can you give me another example? Thanks

 

[charliedeut]

Hi lisa,

IMO, it means that its cost is just under a trillion dollars (say, a trillion minus 1 dollar). "Eyelash" is used to express this short distance between the cost and a trillion (Trillion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). There are other such expressions for "short distance", but we'll have to wait for native speakers to provide them.

Greetings,

charliedeut

PS: I believe you could also say "a hair short of a trillion", but I'm not sure if I'm translating directly from Spanish here.

 

[Rover_KE]

You got that right, charliedeut. That's what it means, though I've never heard eyelash used in that context.

There's also a tad short of. . ., a fraction below . . ., a bit less than. . . .

The quote is taken from the fifth paragraph of the text printed HERE (you don't have to listen to the speech).

Rover