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
Michael Wilner, Los Angeles Times, 29 May 2025
The administration has accused Harvard of being in the grip of a leftist ideology that is damaging the institution, and has withheld billions of dollars in federal funding from the college, with a threat to go further.
—Jordan King
shane Croucher, MSNBC Newsweek, 29 May 2025
Compared to the tens of billions spent on satellite navigation, the Fully Autonomous Flight 2.0 Challenge is a low-cost, short-term project.
—David Hambling, Forbes.com, 29 May 2025
Huang said recently that years of U.S. restrictions on AI chip exports were a strategic misfire that cost Nvidia billions and handed Chinese rivals a powerful incentive to innovate.
—Shannon Carroll, Quartz, 28 May 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 5 Jun. 2025.
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