decabillion
Language: English
Part of speech: num
Forms: form: decabillions
Etymology: From deca- + billion.
Senses: examples: text: Breathtaking megadeals make headlines almost daily, and have lost their ability to astound. Kraft, RJR Nabisco, Pillsbury — these and other takeovers and leveraged buyouts requiring deca[-]billions of dollars, would have overwhelmed the most sophisticated investment bankers of the 1970s.
ref: 1988 October 30, Robert Sobel, “J.P. Morgan Would Call Takeovers Of Today No Big Deal”, in New York Newsday, New York, N.Y., page 78, column 1:
text: Of course, to achieve what he did, [Jeff] Vinik had to take risks—throwing decabillions of dollars into technology stocks long before that sector caught fire, for instance, and tossing out all the consumer growth stocks so beloved by [Peter] Lynch (“no growth potential,” says Vinik).
ref: 1995 September, Gregory Spears, “The $50 Billion Man”, in Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, volume 49, number 9, Washington, D.C.: The Kiplinger Washington Editors Inc., →ISSN, pages 33–34:
text: The common currency of all such East–West discussions was money—the need for very large sums to carry out macroeconomic reform, but just as the United States and the other G-7 states had resisted Mikhail Gorbachev’s outsized requests, so too did Boris Yeltsin’s large numbers after 1991 fail to bring forth the decabillions sought.
ref: 1997, Robert Sharlet, “Bringing the Rule of Law to Russia and the Newly Independent States: The Role of the West in the Transformation of the Post-Soviet Legal Systems”, in Karen Dawisha, editor, The International Dimension of Post-Communist Transitions in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (The International Politics of Eurasia; 10), Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., →ISBN, page 323:
text: [Bill] Gates is worth decabillions in part because he had a few big visions, such as the basic tide of growth in PCs and the creative power of open standards, but equally important has been his embrace of the fluidity of the future and an awesome ability to react to surprises.
ref: 1998 May 20, James V. DeLong, “Perspective on Microsoft: The Goose With the Golden Egg Is Being Led to Slaughter”, in Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, Calif.: The Times Mirror Company, page B13, column 3:
text: The earth has given us three imperatives. The first is to reproduce with foresight. Our planet is a sphere. Space and materials are finite. Freedom, health, and breath cannot coexist with a limitless surge of fleshy billions, doubling in decades to decabillions and doubling again.
ref: 2004, Paul R. Fleischman, “Introduction to the Second Edition”, in Cultivating Inner Peace: Exploring the Psychology, Wisdom, and Poetry of Gandhi, Thoreau, the Buddha, and Others, 2nd edition, Onalaska, Wash.: Pariyatti Press, published 2010, →ISBN, page 11:
text: Rebuilding New Orleans will require many years, deca-billions of dollars and a national consensus about priorities, there and elsewhere.
ref: 2005 September 8, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, “The business of America: Katrina ‘a failure of leadership’”, in The Miami Herald, Miami, Fla., page 19A, columns 3–4:
text: Google’s revenue from its unlikely foray into selling software probably won’t be all that much to begin with, but this isn’t a fight for sales. Think of this fight as determining a few decabillion dollars of market value circa 2010.
ref: 2006 November 27, Victoria Murphy Barret, Quentin Hardy, “Desperate Acts”, in Forbes, volume 178, number 11, New York, N.Y.: Forbes LLC., →ISSN, page 46, column 3:
glosses: Ten billion.
Related terms: centibillion
decabillionaire
decamillion