number (plural verb)
1 (abbreviation bn) 1000000000; one thousand million
HELPNOTE You say a, one, two, several, etc. billion without a final 's' on 'billion'. Billions (of...) can be used if there is no number or quantity before it. Always use a plural verb with billion or billions:
Worldwide sales reached 2.5 billion. * half a billion dollars * a few tens of billions of yen * They have spent billions on the problem (= billions of dollars, etc.).
HELPNOTE There are more examples of how to use numbers at the entry for hundred.
2 (a billion or billions) (informal) a very large amount:
Our immune systems are killing billions of germs right now.
3 (old-fashioned, BrE) 1000000000000; one million million
SYNTRILLION
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for billion is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Does billion appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — billion appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
