billion

CEFRB1

/ˈbɪljən/

adjective · numeral

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

01
adjective
denoting a quantity consisting of one thousand million items or units in the United States.
02
adjective
Extra detail
An unspecified very large number.

Examples

The generous dentist contributed some two billion yen to charity.
The plan announced Tuesday calls for $54 billion in tax cuts.

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses: 5
Parts of speech: 2
Citations: 5
Synonyms: 2

Also pronounced

/ˈbɪ(l)jən/

Deep Dive

numeral

Extra meanings

Either of two large amounts:
a thousand million (logic: 1,000 × 1,000²): 1 followed by nine zeros, 10⁹.
A million (times a) million (logic: 1,000,000²): a 1 followed by twelve zeros (10¹²); a thousand milliard.

More examples

In context

Worldwide sales look set to top $1 billion.
There were billions of people at the concert.
Near-synonyms: gazillion; see also Thesaurus:zillion

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Nearby

Citations

The word in print, with each source given in full.

At the last assessment it [the national debt] amounts to seven billion pounds (£7,000,000,000).
1921 January 24, “National Finances”, in Devon and Exeter Gazette, page 5
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.
2013 May 25, “No hiding place”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8837, page 74
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
2019 October, Dan Harvey, “HS2 costs rise as schedule slips”, in Modern Railways, page 9
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.
2023 May 18, Reuters, “Chipmakers look to Japan as worries about China grow”, in CNN Business
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.
2023 October 30, Herbold et al., “A large-scale comparison of human-written versus ChatGPT-generated essays” (18617), in Scientific Reports, volume 13, page 1

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Origin

adjective

From French billion, equivalent to bi- (“two”) + -illion.