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
Eric Lagatta, AZCentral.com, 17 Oct. 2025
Although the new commercial space ethos of building satellites fast and cheap has dominated Earth imaging from space for years, deep-space astronomy has so far been headed mostly in the opposite direction — trending toward more complex machines worth billions of dollars.
—Tereza Pultarova, Space.com, 17 Oct. 2025
The government is pouring billions of dollars into developing Mecca and Medina, with a view to accommodating 30 million worshippers a year by 2030.
—Matthew Martin, semafor.com, 17 Oct. 2025
And in a sign that Wall Street took it seriously, stocks of Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, the makers of GLP-1 drugs Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound, fell significantly, wiping out tens of billions of dollars in the companies’ market values.
—Meg Tirrell, CNN Money, 17 Oct. 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 18 Oct. 2025.
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