billion
part of speech
number (a billion, billions); noun
meaning for a pupil
1) A billion is one thousand million: 1,000,000,000. tree →
2) Billions means a huge, uncountable-feeling number of things. tree →
sense in the lessons
In maths lessons a billion is written 1,000,000,000 — a one with nine zeros, or a thousand millions. In science the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and there are about 8 billion people. In everyday talk «billions» means very many. Phrases: a billion, billions of, two billion.
examples
- A billion is a thousand million. tree →
- There are about eight billion people in the world. tree →
- The Earth is about four and a half billion years old. tree →
- Write one billion with nine zeros. tree →
- There are billions of stars in our galaxy. tree →
- The bridge cost two billion dollars. tree →
- I've told you a billion times! tree →
- Michael was ready: he wanted to see how long it took him to do a billion miles. tree →
note
After a number, no «s»: «three billion people», not «three billions». Use «billions of» only without a number. Today a billion always means 1,000,000,000 (nine zeros); in old British books it once meant a million million. Order: thousand (3 zeros), million (6), billion (9), trillion (12).
In the corpora
- Desert locusts are grasshoppers that, when crowded, change colour and behaviour and form swarms of billions that eat crops.
- For billions of years, all life on Earth was microscopic.
- The world's rivers carry billions of tonnes of sediment to the sea every year.
- For billions of years life was only microbes.
- Mercury has no air, rain or moving plates of crust to wear its craters away, so they last for billions of years.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «billion» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.