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
Helen Regan, CNN Money, 25 Oct. 2025
SpaceX additionally benefits from billions of dollars in contracts from NASA and the Department of Defense by providing launch services for classified satellites and other payloads.
—Eric Lagatta, AZCentral.com, 24 Oct. 2025
In addition to cutting big checks for talent, Meta is pouring tens of billions of dollars into data center projects to expand its AI computing footprint.
—Paulina Likos, CNBC, 24 Oct. 2025
Southeastern Wisconsin has become the latest hot spot for some of the largest tech companies – Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle – to spend billions on build data centers to further artificial intelligence programming.
—Ricardo Torres, jsonline.com, 24 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 31 Oct. 2025.
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