billion

• n. 十亿；大量
• num. 十亿
• adj. 十亿的
• n. (Billion)人名；(法)比利翁

前缀bi-, 二。million, 百万。字面意思是万亿，现通常指十亿。

billion (n.)

1680s, from French billion (originally byllion in Chuquet's unpublished "Le Triparty en la Science des Nombres," 1484; copied by De la Roche, 1520); see bi- "two" + million. A million million in Britain and Germany (numeration by groups of sixes), which was the original sense; subsequently altered in French to "a thousand million" (numeration by groups of threes) and picked up in that form in U.S., "due in part to French influence after the Revolutionary War" [David E. Smith, "History of Mathematics," 1925]. France then reverted to the original meaning in 1948. British usage is truer to the etymology, but U.S. sense is said to be increasingly common there in technical writing.

In Italian arithmetics from the last quarter of the fifteenth century the words bilione or duilione, trilione, quadrilione or quattrilione, quintilione, cinquilione, or quinquilione, sestione or sestilione, settilione, ottilione, noeilione and decilione occur as common abbreviations of due volte millioni, tre volte millione, etc. In other countries these words came into use much later, although one French writer, Nicolas Chuquet, mentions them as early as 1484, in a book not printed until 1881. The Italians had, besides, another system of numeration, proceeding by powers of a thousand. The French, who like other northern peoples, took most if not all their knowledge of modern or Arabic arithmetic from the Italians, early confounded the two systems of Italian numeration, counting in powers of a thousand, but adopting the names which properly belong to powers of a million.

For a time in Britain gillion (1961), based on giga-, was tried as "a thousand million" to avoid ambiguity.

来自柯林斯例句

2. Novello says college students will spend $4.2 billion yearly on alcoholic beverages.

诺韦洛说大学生每年在酒精饮品上会消费掉42亿美元。

来自柯林斯例句

3. This has been done by plundering £4 billion from the Government reserves.

这是通过侵占40亿英镑的政府储备金完成的。

来自柯林斯例句

4. The advertising agency rang up 1.4 billion dollars in yearly sales.

这家广告代理商每年销售额达14亿美元。

来自柯林斯例句

5. The US trade deficit widened to $7.59 billion in November.

11月美国的贸易赤字扩大到75.9亿美元。

来自柯林斯例句