zillion
Americannoun
-
zillions,
plural
-
zillion
plural
adjective
noun
determiner
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of zillion
First recorded in 1930–35; jocular alteration of million, billion, etc.
Explanation
A zillion is a huge but nonspecific number. If your favorite café is so crowded that there's barely room to stand, let alone find a place to sit, you might say there are a zillion people in there. Use zillion when there are so many things or people that it would be hard to count them all. Zillion sounds like an actual number because of its similarity to billion, million, and trillion, and it is modeled on these real numerical values. However, like its cousin jillion, zillion is an informal way to talk about a number that's enormous but indefinite.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“I hadn’t seen it in a zillion years, and when I saw it, I understood it a little bit more. It made me feel tense, but I also thought, ‘Oh, interesting.’
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 3, 2026
Playing since August, these Hoosiers have endured a zillion doubts, tests, TV interviews, trophy presentations, confetti showers and snoozy sponsor speeches.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 10, 2026
I bet the dorms are nicer, and not everyone needs to go to a school with a zillion people, many of whom are deranged.
From Slate ● Jun. 12, 2025
Fortunately, Salon's Culture team watched about 0.000001% of those zillion streamers and have helped sort the mid from the must-watch.
From Salon ● Dec. 20, 2024
But I also knew that the sun was really a star about a zillion miles away.
From "The Titan's Curse" by Rick Riordan
Ghibli and Pokémon iconography may be broadly recognizable, but Lego’s appeal, represented by its zillions of plastic blocks and many movies and TV series, transcends nations.
From Salon ● Apr. 26, 2026
I think they were all designed by this one woman that they all went to and they all had zillions of Sky tops.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 24, 2026
And when we say a few, we mean zillions.
From Seattle Times ● May 16, 2024
After what seemed like zillions of attempts by many hands to fix that 1981 show, the director Maria Friedman figured it out, locating its long-lost core in Jonathan Groff’s mesmerizing, furious performance.
From New York Times ● Dec. 4, 2023
For a long time I sit, watching them and staring at the sky, full of zillions of stars.
From "The Queen of Water" by Laura Resau
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
