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billion

billion

330 1.0
One thousand million written 1,000,000,000, sometimes formerly used in Britain to mean one million million
  • noun
  • /ˈbɪljən/
translation icon : mil millones
  • The private sector is investing billions of dollars in a fleet of Arctic tankers.
  • billions of dollars
  • billions of pounds
  • spend billions

So the sun is something like a billion billion billion tons of mostly hydrogen gas.

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Examples

  • 450,000 small farms of twelve acres or less produce billions of pounds of chocolate each year.

    Academic text (2008)
  • "Do you know how many planets there are? There are billions of planets," he said.

    Fiction book (1993)
  • l put my company, my name, billions of dollars on the line.

  • We're spending billions of dollars.

  • But the truth of the matter is we are billions of unique life forms living in this realm.

  • The governments of the world spent billions on medicine, welfare, charity.

  • There is every reason to think that billions of barrels of oil are there for the taking.

    Academic text (2011)
  • I mean, you know, we see billions and billions of dollars going to Ukraine, going to Israel.

  • The company reported profits of over billion dollars last year.

  • In the latest report, scientists projected that the cost of climate change could reach trillions, with damages estimated in the billion range annually.

Synonyms

trillion
vsbillion
21 2.8

A number equal to one million million, written as 1,000,000,000,000

usually refers to the smaller nine-zero number rather than the larger twelve-zero one
one thousand million
vsbillion
  • UK
1.0

A number equal to 1,000,000,000 written as one followed by nine zeros

is the common single word label now used instead of the numeric phrase
milliard
vsbillion
  • Archaic
9.9

A number that equals one thousand million and is the same as a billion

is now the mainstream label used more widely than that older British form
4.3

A number equal to one followed by twelve zeros

primarily denotes the smaller nine-zero number rather than the larger twelve-zero one

Compounds

A measure of how many billion math calculations a computer does each second

A rough annual grass grown for edible seeds, animal feed, and wildlife food

How Many

trillion
346 2.6
billion
330 1.0
million
1.0
thousand
1.0

Surface Forms

billion singular
billions plural

Etymology

Billion has the parts bi- 'two' and million, and in older British use it meant 'one million million', 1,000,000,000,000, because it was like the 'second' power of a million. That older meaning can make old British texts confusing today, since many places now use billion for 'one thousand million'.