billion
Part of speech: num
Morphological type: derivation
Etymology: From French billion, equivalent to bi- (“two”) + -illion.
Base: bi
Inflected forms:
form: billions
pos: num
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: Either of two large amounts:
pos: num
tags: US
examples: At the last assessment it [the national debt] amounts to seven billion pounds (£7,000,000,000).
In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who received unsolicited adverts through the post, only 3% bought anything as a result.
However, despite the prospect of HS2 being curtailed and the revelation that the programme is late and billions over budget, for now, at least, work on the scheme appears to be business as usual
Micron said in a statement that it would bring extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology to Japan, becoming the first semiconductor company to do so, and expected to invest up to 500 billion yen ($3.6 billion) with support from the Japanese government.
The ChatGPT service which serves as Web front-end to GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 was the fastest-growing service in history to break the 100 million user milestone in January and had 1 billion visits by February 2023.
Plaintiff States also receive billions of dollars in funds every year directly from Treasury through BFS under federal grant programs.
gloss: Either of two large amounts:
pos: num
tags: dated
examples: n = 1,000,000,000,000, that is, = a billion, or the square of a million
There is a bill to be picked up for cleaning the former Soviet countries of £1 billion. By that I mean a British billion, because when I was little I was told that a billion was a million million and then the Americans said that it was a thousand million. Well, I am talking about a million million pounds worth of clean-up to be done.
gloss: An unspecified very large number.
pos: num
tags: colloquial
excessive
examples: Near-synonyms: gazillion; see also Thesaurus:zillion
There were billions of people at the concert.
Related words: trillion
coined at same time
zillion
coined after the series million
quadrillion
gazillion
same origin
-illion
Derived words: Barbillion
billionaire
billion-dollar grass
billion-dollar question
billion laughs
Boring Billion
centibillion
golden billion
megabillion
multi-billion
multibillion
multibillions
Translations:
lang: Armenian
word: երկիլիոն
roman: erkilion
lang: Basque
word: bilioi
lang: Catalan
word: bilió
lang: Chinese Mandarin
word: 兆
roman: zhào
lang: Chinese Mandarin
word: 萬億 /万亿
roman: wànyì
lang: Czech
word: bilión
lang: Danish
word: billion
lang: Dutch
word: biljoen
lang: Esperanto
word: duiliono
lang: Faroese
word: billión
lang: Finnish
word: biljoona
lang: French
word: billion
lang: German
word: Billion
lang: Greek
word: τρισεκατομμύριο
roman: trisekatommýrio
lang: Italian
word: bilione
lang: Japanese
word: 兆
roman: chō
lang: Korean
word: 조
roman: jo
lang: Manchu
word: ᠰᠠᠵᠠ
roman: saja
lang: Māori
word: piriona
lang: Persian
word: تریلیون
roman: trilyun
lang: Polish
word: bilion
lang: Portuguese
word: bilião
lang: Portuguese
word: trilhão
lang: Romanian
word: bilion
lang: Russian
word: триллио́н
roman: trillión
lang: Sanskrit
word: महापद्म
roman: mahāpadma
lang: Sicilian
word: triliuni
lang: Slovak
word: bilión
lang: Spanish
word: billón
lang: Swedish
word: biljon
lang: Turkish
word: trilyon
lang: Urdu
word: مِلْیُن
roman: milyun