billions

Numeral

billion (plural billions)

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

   Synonyms:

   milliard, thousand million

2. (dated, British & Australian, long scale) A million 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 million1778, Francis Maseres, “A Method of Finding, by the Help of Sir Isaac Newton's Binomial Theorem, a Near Value of the very Slowly Converging Infinite Series …”, in Philosophical Transactions of the...

   Synonyms:

   trillion[short scale]]>

3. (colloquial, excessive) An unspecified very large number.
   • Near-synonyms: gazillion; see also Thesaurus:zillion

   Synonyms:

   gazillion