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# billion

«billion» in Mova's school dictionary: **one thousand million: 1,000,000,000** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

number (a billion, billions); noun

### meaning for a pupil

1) A billion is one thousand million: 1,000,000,000. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/billion/#m1)

2) Billions means a huge, uncountable-feeling number of things. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/billion/#m2)

### 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 →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/billion/#x1)
- There are about eight billion people in the world. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/billion/#x2)
- The Earth is about four and a half billion years old. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/billion/#x3)
- Write one billion with nine zeros. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/billion/#x4)
- There are billions of stars in our galaxy. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/billion/#x5)
- The bridge cost two billion dollars. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/billion/#x6)
- I've told you a billion times! [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/billion/#x7)
- Michael was ready: he wanted to see how long it took him to do a billion miles. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/billion/#x8)

### 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.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/37-butterflies-beetles-flies-mosquitoes-grasshoppers/16/)
- [For billions of years, all life on Earth was microscopic.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/276-how-old-is-it-rock-layers-rock-clocks-amber-and-the-long-story-of-life/11/)
- [The world's rivers carry billions of tonnes of sediment to the sea every year.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/53-rivers-shaping-the-land/18/)
- [For billions of years life was only microbes.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/58-deep-time-and-the-story-of-life/5/)
- [Mercury has no air, rain or moving plates of crust to wear its craters away, so they last for billions of years.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/space/3-mercury/15/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «billion» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/billion/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.