EXAMPLES | WORD ORIGIN
noun, plural bil·lions, (as after a numeral ) bil·lion. a cardinal number represented in the U.S. by 1 followed by 9 zeros, and in Great Britain by 1 followed by 12 zeros.
a very large number: I've told you so billions of times.
adjective equal in number to a billion.
Origin of billion 1680–90; <
French, equivalent to
b(i )-
bi-1 +
-illion, as in
million Related forms bil·lionth , adjective, noun Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019
Related Words for billion lots ,
tons ,
abundance ,
masses ,
scads ,
plenty ,
heaps ,
piles ,
gobs ,
loads ,
thousands ,
millions ,
many Examples from the Web for billion Contemporary Examples of billion Using standard methods, the cost of printing DNA could run upwards of a billion dollars or more, depending on the strand.
And as a bonus, they send home more than $20 billion in remittances each year.
The amount of vanished bitcoins was 650,000 BTC (or 24.7 billion yen).
Why else would $4 billion have been spent on the midterm election?
Among other things, the bill appropriates $1.1 trillion in funding—including over $550 billion for the Department of Defense.
Historical Examples of billion A billion dollars and immunity to cut off the outer dome of force.
“About a billion dollars, I guess,” he answered, after mature consideration.
A billion billion morsels of wet mud were no more imposing than one.
Minutes ago, Tanith had been six and a half billion miles away.
These mines may yield gold to the amount of a billion dollars.
British Dictionary definitions for billion noun plural -lions or -lion one thousand million: it is written as 1 000 000 000 or 10 9
(formerly, in Britain) one million million: it is written as 1 000 000 000 000 or 10 12
(often plural) any exceptionally large number
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determiner (preceded by a or a cardinal number) amounting to a billion it seems like a billion years ago (as pronoun ) we have a billion here Show More
Derived Forms billionth , adjective , noun Word Origin for billion C17: from French, from bi- 1 + -llion as in million
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for billion n. 1680s, from French billion (originally byllion in Chuquet's unpublished "Le Triparty en la Science des Nombres," 1484; copied by De la Roche, 1520), from bi- "two" (see bi- ) + (m)illion . A million million in Britain and Germany (numeration by groups of sixes), which was the original sense; subsequently altered in French to "a thousand million" (numeration by groups of threes) and picked up in that form in U.S., "due in part to French influence after the Revolutionary War" [David E. Smith, "History of Mathematics," 1925]. France then reverted to the original meaning in 1948. British usage is truer to the etymology, but U.S. sense is said to be increasingly common there in technical writing.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
