Word Finder - billions

definition

(modern British & Australian, short scale) a thousand million (logic: 1,000 × 1,000^2): 1 followed by nine zeros, 109; a milliard

definition

(British & Australian, long scale) A million million (logic: 1,000,000^2): a 1 followed by twelve zeros; 1012

definition

An unspecified very large number.

example

There were billions of people at the concert.

What was it like to have the duty to protect billions of them?

In the case of sea-fishes it is becoming increasingly recognized that the millions of cod fry which are annually turned out of the American, Newfoundland and Norwegian hatcheries are but an insignificant fraction of the billions of fry which are naturally produced.

The grouping method introduces multiplication into the definition of large numbers; but this, from the teacher's point of view, is not now such a serious objection as it was in the days when children were introduced to millions and billions before they had any idea of elementary arithmetical processes.

This Government has poured billions of pounds into providing ICT equipment for schools.

Jan 2006 The world bank estimates the cost of fighting bird flu will reach billions of dollars.

And beyond that, billions more ounces of gold may be buried beneath the ocean floor.

There's no point in investing billions more in the railways if you miss your train because you're stuck in a traffic jam.

Tobacco advertising and promotions Every year the tobacco industry spends billions of pounds worldwide advertising and promoting tobacco products.

While their companies were losing undeclared billions, high executives were rewarding themselves with kings ' ransoms in salaries, options and bonuses.

In fact experts have predicted that this industry will explode over the next five years and be worth billions of dollars within a decade.

The cost of setting up and administering these taxes, charges and tolls has been estimated at many billions of pounds.

James Watson seduced the public into spending billions on the human genome project by promising to reveal 'the blueprint for making a human being' .

Every year billions of hard working tax payers ' money is wasted on the poor.

At stake here is not just the billions of dollars NASA has wasted chasing chimeras, but the very integrity of scientific exploration.

Billions of pounds of new investment have been pumped into the city's economy, transforming the cityscape.

He made millions, or perhaps billions, of dollars smuggling cocaine into the United States.

You just cannot spend billions of pounds replacing level crossings.

As a result of the economic plundering of Belgium between 1940 and 1944 the damage suffered amounted to 175 billions of Belgian francs.

With taxpayers billions, New Labor is creating a new ghetto.

The last thing we should be doing is using billions to exacerbate that imbalance.

Billions of people in the world have seen with deep indignation the televised images of the terrible events in Palestine.

Every year, hundreds of billions of dollars, far in excess of aid inflows, flow out of poor countries to the rich.

The impact of millions to billions of carbonaceous meteorites in the early solar system may have replenished the water supply on the terrestrial planets.

Nature has developed biological nanotechnology for billions of years of evolution.

We now know that the unprecedented outpouring of billions of dollars for victims of the tsunami has made little impact.

The pity is they donât begin to match the extra billions poured into the NHS.

Small stars (called red dwarfs) burn their fuel very slowly and last tens to hundreds of billions of years.

Extensive air showers contain billions of secondary particles and can cause nearly simultaneous bursts of light in more than five tanks.

We hope you will join us in our fight to stamp out the senseless slaughter of billions of helpless insects across the world.

They are now wasting further billions to prop up a sinking titanic of enterprise that's morally, scientifically as well as financially bankrupt.

Climate change will accelerate uncontrollably; billions of people will die this century and only the Arctic regions will remain tolerable for humans.

He conned billions of people with a big fat whopper.

Thus, the Koreans go far beyond the Eskimo and number their demons by thousands of billions; they fill the chimney, the shed, the living-room, the kitchen, they are on every shelf and jar; in thousands they waylay the traveller as he leaves his home, beside him, behind him, dancing in front of him, whirring over his head, crying out upon him from air, earth and water.

Billions of US dollars were siphoned away from infrastructure projects to bolster security and pay for the promotion of democracy.

They will also be participating in an ongoing and escalating battle for market share between global sportswear brands worth billions of pounds.

But here we go again preparing to squander billions on weapons that we will never use.

Would not it be an absolute outrage if billions were squandered on a new generation of nuclear weapons without a vote in the House?

The Veterans Affairs data theft could ultimately cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

Like billions of others around the world, Andy Crisp spent the day transfixed by the live images on the TV.

Part 1 Trillions of Billions of content pages make up the wide world of Internet.

In the past hedge funds were limited to those who had millions or billions to invest, but times have changed and opened this type of investing to a wider range of people, such as those that have thousands of dollars to spend.

If you have thousands or millions or even billions of dollars to invest in a hedge fund you still want to look closely before you invest.

The idea for a 100 percent compostable chip bag stemmed from the fact that billions of snack chip bags wind up in landfills each year.

Items are transported long distances using billions of gallons of gasoline.

Web Sudoku offers, you guessed it, billions of Sudoku puzzles that you can play on your desktop.

In fact, they spend billions and billions of dollars trying to capture the image that teens are willing to spend money on to achieve and to follow.

Not only is she taking the kids, she's meeting with lawyers, so you can be sure she's taking a good chunk of her assumed to be ex-huband's billions.

The American-based company has been around since 1964, and has made billions of dollars selling sportswear and equipment.

The counterfeit industry is one that generates billions of dollars each year and one that law enforcement officials work hard to stop.

The interface is free from clutter, the puzzles are plentiful (WebSudoku claims to have billions of them), and there are enough extras to let you play sudoku however you want to.