billion
noun
Did you know?
How much is a billion? It might depend on whom you ask. Billion was borrowed from French in the late 1600s to indicate the number one million raised to the power of two, or a million million—a number represented by a 1 followed by 12 zeros. However, the French later changed their naming conventions so that a billion became a thousand million (a 1 followed by 9 zeros) and a trillion became a thousand thousand million (or a million million, the old billion). The French have since returned to the older system, but it was this new system that was adopted by American English speakers in the 1800s. In Britain, the newer system has seen increasing use since the 1950s, but the older sense is still sometimes used there as well.
Examples of billion in a Sentence
Arkansas Online, 22 June 2025
This opportunity explains why VW has continued to work on autonomous ride hailing while car companies like General Motors and Ford have already given up after nearly a decade of hype and billions of dollars invested.
—Christiaan Hetzner, Fortune, 21 June 2025
The moon, for example, is a relatively small, barren world scarred by craters and dark lunar seas born of brutal asteroid bombardments that occurred billions of years ago.
—Anthony Wood, Space.com, 21 June 2025
The Trump administration has frozen billions of dollars of Harvard's federal funding, launched a review of the school's tax-exempt status and attempted to prevent the university from enrolling international students, who make up a third of its student population.
—Zachary Schermele, USA Today, 21 June 2025
See All Example Sentences for billion
Cite this Entry
“Billion.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/billion. Accessed 26 Jun. 2025.
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