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definitions

million

[mil-yuh n]
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noun, plural mil·lions, (as after a numeral) mil·lion.

adjective

amounting to one million in number.
amounting to a very great number: a million things to do.

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RELATED WORDS

thousand, trillion, much, lot, total, sum, bank, ton, load, profusion, gathering, pot, scad, cluster, fullness, jumble, concentration, mint, bunch, mountain

Nearby words

  1. milliner,
  2. millinery,
  3. milling,
  4. milling machine,
  5. millington,
  6. million electron volts,
  7. millionaire,
  8. millionairess,
  9. millionfold,
  10. millionth

Origin of million

1350–1400; Middle English milioun < Middle French < early Italian millione, equivalent to mille thousand (< Latin) + -one augmentative suffix
Related formsmul·ti·mil·lion, noun
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Examples from the Web for million

British Dictionary definitions for million

million

noun plural -lions or -lion

the cardinal number that is the product of 1000 multiplied by 1000See also number (def. 1)
a numeral, 1 000 000, 10 6, M, etc, representing this number
(often plural) informal an extremely large but unspecified number, quantity, or amountI have millions of things to do

determiner

(preceded by a or by a numeral)
  1. amounting to a milliona million light years away
  2. (as pronoun)I can see a million under the microscope
gone a million Australian informal done for; sunk
Related formsRelated prefix: mega-

Word Origin for million

C17: via Old French from early Italian millione, from mille thousand, from Latin
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 million

million

n.

late 14c., from Old French million (late 13c.), from Italian millione (now milione), literally "a great thousand," augmentative of mille "thousand," from Latin mille, which is of uncertain origin. Used mainly by mathematicians until 16c. India, with its love of large numbers, had names before 3c. for numbers well beyond a billion. The ancient Greeks had no name for a number greater than ten thousand, the Romans for none higher than a hundred thousand. "A million" in Latin would have been decies centena milia, literally "ten hundred thousand." Million to one as a type of "long odds" is attested from 1761. Related: Millions.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
Idioms and Phrases with million

million

see feel like oneself (a million dollars); look like a million dollars; one in a million.

The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.