billionnoun [ C ]
uk/ˈbɪl.jən/us/ˈbɪl.jən/B2 the number 1,000,000,000:
The population of China is over a/one billion.
Cosmetics is a billion-dollar industry.
The government has invested billions of dollars in the project.
UK old-fashioned 1,000,000,000,000
Note:
- This number is now called a trillion.
billions of sth informal
a very large number:
There were billions of flies everywhere.
More examples
- Japan exported $117 billion in merchandise to the US in 1999.
- 8 billion has been wiped off share prices worldwide.
- In China, the policy of one child per family was introduced to stabilize the country's population at 1.6 billion.
- The Clinton administration last winter assembled the $50 billion emergency bailout package to ease a financial crisis in Mexico.
- The national debt stands at $55 billion.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Numbers: cardinal, including nought & zero
- eighty
- eleven
- fifty
- five
- fourteen
- giga-
- googol
- hundred
- milliard
- million
- O, o
- oh
- seventy
- six
- ten
- thirty
- thousand
- trillion
- twelve
- uni
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