billion

Numeral

1. Either of two large amounts:
   • 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...
   • 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...

   Synonyms: milliard thousand million

   1. (US, modern British & Australian, short scale) a thousand million (logic: 1,000 × 1,000²): 1 followed by nine zeros, 10⁹.

   2. (dated, British & Australian, long scale) A million (times a) million (logic: 1,000,000²): a 1 followed by twelve zeros (10¹²); a thousand milliard.

      • n = 1,000,000,000,000, that is, = a billion, or the square of a million - 1778, Francis Maseres, “A Method of Finding, by the Help of Sir Isaac Newton's Binomial Theorem, a Near Value of the very Slowly Converging...
      • There is a bill to be picked up for cleaning the former Soviet countries of £1 billion. By that I mean a British billion, because when I was little I was told that a billion was a million million and then the Americans...

      Synonyms: trillion[short scale]]>

2. An unspecified very large number.
   • Near-synonyms: gazillion; see also Thesaurus:zillion
   • There were billions of people at the concert.

   Synonyms: gazillion