Adjacent Words

Billion definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

BILL'ION, n. bil'yun. [bis and million.]
A million of millions; as many millions as there are units in a million.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: denoting a quantity consisting of one thousand million items or units in the United States
2: denoting a quantity consisting of one million million items or units in Great Britain n
1: the number that is represented as a one followed by 12 zeros; in the United Kingdom the usage followed in the United States is frequently seen [syn: billion, one million million, 1000000000000]
2: a very large indefinite number (usually hyperbole); "there were millions of flies" [syn: million, billion, trillion, zillion, jillion, gazillion]
3: the number that is represented as a one followed by 9 zeros [syn: billion, one thousand million, 1000000000]

Merriam Webster's

noun Etymology: French, from bi- + -illion (as in million) Date: 1834 1. — see number table 2. a very large number • billion adjective • billionth adjective or noun

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. & adj. --n. (pl. same or (in sense 3) billions) (in sing. prec. by a or one) 1 a thousand million (1,000,000,000 or 10(9)). 2 (now less often, esp. Brit.) a million million (1,000,000,000,000 or 10(12)). 3 (in pl.) colloq. a very large number (billions of years). --adj. that amount to a billion. Derivatives: billionth adj. & n. Etymology: F (as BI-, MILLION)

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Milliard Mil`liard", n. [F., from mille, mil, thousand, L. mille.] A thousand millions; -- called also billion. See Billion.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Billion Bil"lion, n. [F. billion, arbitrarily formed fr. L. bis twice, in imitation of million a million. See Million.] According to the French and American method of numeration, a thousand millions, or 1,000,000,000; according to the English method, a million millions, or 1,000,000,000,000. See Numeration.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(billions) Frequency: The word is one of the 700 most common words in English. Note: The plural form is 'billion' after a number, or after a word or expression referring to a number, such as 'several' or 'a few'. 1. A billion is a thousand million. ...3 billion dollars... This year, almost a billion birds will be processed in the region. NUM 2. If you talk about billions of people or things, you mean that there is a very large number of them but you do not know or do not want to say exactly how many. Biological systems have been doing this for billions of years... He urged US executives to invest billions of dollars in his country. QUANT-PLURAL: QUANT of pl-n • You can also use billions as a pronoun. He thought that it must be worth billions. PRON

Moby Thesaurus

a billion, a crore, a lakh, a million, a myriad, a nonillion, a quadrillion, a thousand, a zillion, astronomical number, googol, googolplex, infinitude, infinity, jillion, large number, milliard, trillion, zillion