From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishbillionbil‧lion /ˈbɪljən/ ●●● W2 number (plural billion or billions) 1 HMNthe number 1,000,000,000 The final cost could be as much as one billion dollars.two/three/four etc billion 3.5 billion years ago Overseas debt is a staggering £16 billion.billions of pounds/dollars etc Airlines have lost billions of dollars.2 an extremely large number of things or peoplea billion A billion stars shone in the night sky.billions of something There are billions of things I want to say.3 HMN British English old use the number 1,000,000,000,000 —billionth adjective —billionth noun [countable]
Examples from the Corpus
billion• Farnham, which manages assets of $ 30 billion.• That saves them nearly $ 4 billion a year.• The agency said telemarketing fraud is estimated to cost consumers as much as $ 40 billion a year.• The committee, generously enough, rounded down the $ 6. 5 billion result to get $ 6 billion.• Co. and is part of a $ 1 billion shelf registration.• Of these, £1.5 billion to £2 billion worth could be sold on the open market.• The budget allocates $ 19. 45 billion to State Department operations, foreign aid, peacekeeping and international lending institutions.two/three/four etc billion• The world's population now stands at a little over four billion.• Fayetteville is the home of Fort Bragg, which pumps three billion dollars into the local economy.• The amount of uranium in the belt is about four billion tons, enough to make roughly a trillion tactical nuclear weapons.• In early times, then - certainly more than two billion years ago photosynthesis evolved.• The sheer implausibility of the emergence of humans from primordial slime in just three billion years is clearly too much for many.• Hardly any lunar rocks are younger than three billion years.From Longman Business Dictionarybillionbil‧lion /ˈbɪljən/ number, written abbreviation bn British English, bil. American English (plural billion or billions)1one thousand million; 1,000,000,000The group has estimated debts of £1.2 billion.2British English old-fashioned a million millionOrigin billion (1600-1700) French bi- + -illion (as in million) 