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WordNet
a billion
  1. adj: denoting a quantity consisting of one million million items or units in Great Britain [syn: billion]

  2. denoting a quantity consisting of one thousand million items or units in the United States [syn: billion]

Usage examples of "a billion".

When one of these hits an atom in Earth's atmosphere, it splatters it into a shower of a billion fragments that spray out over one hundred square kilometers of Earth's surface.

But when the sun is roughly a third of a billion miles away it doesn't do any harm.

Here he was in a ship that could cross half a billion miles of space and travel at thousands of miles an hour-and he could not save a friend drifting slowly to his death a mere ten miles away.

Earth-two was smaller in population by over a billion, but it was larger in extent.

It was almost half a billion tons of water, all in one piece, and he was standing on it.

Apparently thats happened several times before, at intervals of a third of a billion years--great diebacks of intelligent life, leaving only spores.

And if you assumed there were a billion women in the world, what percentage would it be?

Apparently that's happened several times before, at intervals of a third of a billion yearsgreat diebacks of intelligent life, leaving only spores.

Like a monstrous cannonball, the titanic mass of iridium, more than a mile in diameter, ascends straight up through a billion tons of debris, the decimated seafloor crumbling within the vacuum of the rising colossus's wake.