What does BILLION mean?

Definitions for BILLION
ˈbɪl yənbil·lion

This dictionary definitions page includes all the possible meanings, example usage and translations of the word BILLION.

Princeton's WordNet

  1. billion, one million million, 1000000000000noun

    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

  2. million, billion, trillion, zillion, jillion, gazillionnoun

    a very large indefinite number (usually hyperbole)

    "there were millions of flies"

  3. billion, one thousand million, 1000000000adjective

    the number that is represented as a one followed by 9 zeros

  4. billionadjective

    denoting a quantity consisting of one thousand million items or units in the United States

  5. billionadjective

    denoting a quantity consisting of one million million items or units in Great Britain

Wikipedia

  1. Billion

    Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions: 1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or 109 (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is its only current meaning in English. 1,000,000,000,000, i.e. one million million, or 1012 (ten to the twelfth power), as defined on the long scale. This number, which is one thousand times larger than the short scale billion, is now referred to in English as one trillion. However, this number is the historical meaning in English for the word "billion" (with the exception of the United States), a meaning which was still in official use in British English until some time after World War II.American English adopted the short scale definition from the French (it enjoyed usage in France at the time, alongside the long-scale definition). The United Kingdom used the long scale billion until 1974, when the government officially switched to the short scale, but since the 1950s the short scale had already been increasingly used in technical writing and journalism. Other countries use the word billion (or words cognate to it) to denote either the long scale or short scale billion. (For details, see Long and short scales § Current usage.) Milliard, another term for one thousand million, is extremely rare in English, but words similar to it are very common in other European languages. For example, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Hebrew (Asia), Hungarian, Italian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish (although the expression mil millones — a thousand million — is far more common), Swedish, Tajik, Turkish, Ukrainian and Uzbek — use milliard, or a related word, for the short scale billion, and billion (or a related word) for the long scale billion. Thus for these languages billion is a thousand times larger than the modern English billion.

ChatGPT

  1. billion

    A billion is a number equivalent to one thousand million (1,000,000,000) in the US and many other countries, or one million million (1,000,000,000,000) in the UK before 1974. It's typically used in the context of finance, population and other quantities to denote a very large amount.

Webster Dictionary

  1. Billionnoun

    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

Chambers 20th Century Dictionary

  1. Billion

    bil′yun, n. a million or thousand thousand of millions (1,000,000,000,000); or, according to the French method of numeration, one thousand millions (1,000,000,000). [L. bi-, twice, and Million.]

Surnames Frequency by Census Records

  1. BILLION

    According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Billion is ranked #134712 in terms of the most common surnames in America.

    The Billion surname appeared 125 times in the 2010 census and if you were to sample 100,000 people in the United States, approximately 0 would have the surname Billion.

    81.6% or 102 total occurrences were White.
    8% or 10 total occurrences were of Hispanic origin.
    7.2% or 9 total occurrences were Black.

Matched Categories

British National Corpus

  1. Spoken Corpus Frequency

    Rank popularity for the word 'BILLION' in Spoken Corpus Frequency: #2140

  2. Written Corpus Frequency

    Rank popularity for the word 'BILLION' in Written Corpus Frequency: #3868

  3. Nouns Frequency

    Rank popularity for the word 'BILLION' in Nouns Frequency: #913

Usage in printed sourcesFrom: 

How to pronounce BILLION?

How to say BILLION in sign language?

Numerology

  1. Chaldean Numerology

    The numerical value of BILLION in Chaldean Numerology is: 4

  2. Pythagorean Numerology

    The numerical value of BILLION in Pythagorean Numerology is: 1

Examples of BILLION in a Sentence

  1. Bernie Sanders:

    To run a credible campaign in this day and age, you do need a whole lot of money, whether the magic number is $200 million, it is $150 million, it is a lot of money, but even with that, you would be enormously outspent by the Koch Brothers candidates and the other candidates who will likely spend, in the final analysis, over $1 billion, if not two.

  2. Dan Werthimer:

    I don’t think it’s very likely – a one in a billion chance or something like that – but nevertheless, we’re going to check it out.

  3. Aaron Fischer:

    These investments should translate into approval for around 400 gaming tables...reasonable considering the capital expenditure investment of between $2.5-4 billion being made by each of the operators.

  4. Joe Saluzzi:

    Maybe it was the Morgan Stanley news that kind of stimulated the event, but certainly not enough to move a stock $35 billion, what that is called is evaporation of liquidity, liquidity that was never there in the first place and it’s a typical maneuver that goes on in the fragmented stock market we have now.

  5. Yeb Sano:

    Air pollution steals our livelihoods and our futures, in addition to human lives lost, there's an estimated global cost of 225 billion dollars in lost labor, and trillions in medical costs. This has enormous impacts, on our health and on our wallets.

Popularity rank by frequency of use

BILLION#1#2522#10000

Translations for BILLION

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"BILLION." Definitions.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2025. Web. 22 Feb. 2025. <https://www.definitions.net/definition/BILLION>.

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    greatly exceeding bounds of reason or moderation
    A splay
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