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Billion   /bˈɪljən/   Listen
Billion

noun
1.
The number that is represented as a one followed by 12 zeros; in the United Kingdom the usage followed in the United States is frequently seen.  Synonyms: 1000000000000, one million million.
2.
A very large indefinite number (usually hyperbole).  Synonyms: gazillion, jillion, million, trillion, zillion.
3.
The number that is represented as a one followed by 9 zeros.  Synonyms: 1000000000, one thousand million.



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"Billion" Quotes from Famous Books



... in length and three hundred in breadth, many parts of which are exceedingly fertile, and capable of sustaining a large population. As a colony, however, Algeria has not been a profitable investment. It took eighteen years to subdue it, at a cost of one billion francs, and the annual expense of maintaining it exceeds one hundred million francs. The condition of colonists there has generally been miserable; and while the imports in 1845 were one hundred million francs, the exports were only about ten millions. The great importance of the colony ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... of the earth to be about two billion years, basing their conclusions on a study of lead pockets left as a result of radioactivity in rocks. The Hindu scriptures declare that an earth such as ours is dissolved for one of two reasons: the inhabitants as a whole become either completely good or completely evil. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... good spirits, and with a safe conscience. Harriot was in admiration of my 'lion-port;' and, to do her justice, she conducted herself with great coolness upon the occasion; but then it may be observed, that it was I who was to stand fire, and not she. I thought of poor Lawless a billion of times, at least, as we were going to the ground; and I had my presentiments, and my confused notions of poetic justice: but poetic justice, and all other sorts of justice, went clear out of my head, when I saw my antagonist and her friend, actually pistol in hand, waiting for us; they were both ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... painted: one could tell her pictures mid a billion, So daubed were they with ochre blots and splashes of vermilion; She claimed to be a connoisseur of objets d'art and curios, But what attracted notice was her openwork and lury hose, Fashioned in every colour from magenta down ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various

... to all in a language so universal that even the beasts understand it and cock applauding ears at the sound of the master voice. So that, while the magazine writers now address the million, the composers and singers and players make their bows to the billion. ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... as likely to come the sixth as if the previous five had not occurred, and that despite the fact that before it has appeared at all odds against a run of the same number six times in succession are about two billion, four hundred and ninety-six million, and some thousands. Most systems are based on the old persistent belief that occurrences of chance are affected in some way by occurrences immediately preceding, but disconnected physically. If we've had a run ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... myself together out of the pools of the individual that have held me dispersed so long. I gather my billion thoughts into science and my million wills into a common purpose. Well may you slink down behind the mountains from me, well ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... be th' Beezantiums an' raystored in 1402 be th' Dogs. It fell down because th' foundations was weak, because th' wind blew, because th' beautiful figure iv th' goolden angel on top iv it was fifteen feet high. It will be rebuilt or maybe not. Th' king iv Italy has given thirty-three billion liars to put it up again, an' siv'ral ladin' American archytects have offered to do th' job, makin' an office buildin' iv it. Th' campinily was wan iv th' proudest monymints iv Italy an' was used as a bell-tower at times, ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne

... ass!" cried Ivan, laughing nervously and still seeming to be pondering something intently. "Does it make any difference whether he lies there for ever or walks the quadrillion kilometers? It would take a billion years ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... universe, two billion years ago, there too a planet coalesced from the mutually attracted vortices of twisted space; gases compelled by gravitational forces solidifying to hardened matter, forming a crust over a molten core. In the soupy ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... overhauled them hardly a billion miles inside the Rim, and Mason offered no resistance when he felt their magnetics touch the Scout and draw it gently to the flank of their great ship. It was necessary to scale down the scanner's field to see the huge shape in its entirety. ...
— The Women-Stealers of Thrayx • Fox B. Holden

... we are still better off. Dr. Kane calculates the rain which falls on Ireland in a year at over 100 billion cubic yards; and of this he supposes two-thirds to pass off in evaporation, leaving one-third, equal to nearly a million and a half of horse-power, to reach the sea. His calculations of the water-power of the Shannon and other rivers are most interesting. The elements, of course, are ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... billion cents would you risk a scrap with me, you money-sweater, you," was Daughtry's retort. "You've got their goats, but I've got your number. Not for two billion billion cents would you excite me into callin' it right now.—Big John! Just carry ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... and there gleam other fires,— Burning ships on a shoreless sea; Now and again a flame expires, One last, quivering shaft of light, Shot through a billion leagues of night. ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... degree of suffering experienced and the length of time it endures, the shortest term being ten million years. A good life secures an elevated and happy life on earth, or as a blessed spirit in one of the many heavens, where existence is continued for a bagatelle of ten billion years. When the karma ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... process of art. I have seen it in specimens of old Roman glass, which has been famous here in England; but never in anything is there the brilliancy of these Oriental fragments. How strange that decay, in dark places, and underground, and where there are a billion chances to one that nobody will ever see its handiwork, should produce these beautiful effects! The glass seems to become perfectly brittle, so that it would vanish, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... would you risk a scrap with me, you money-sweater, you," was Daughtry's retort. "You've got their goats, but I've got your number. Not for two billion billion cents would you excite me into callin' it right now.—Big John! Just carry that case of beer across, an' that half case, and store in my boat.—Nishikanta, just start something, if you've got ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... for the further enrichment if Dives and the starvation of Lazaras would exempt from taxation. The total wealth of this nation is not far from 75 billions, while all the land, exclusive of improvements, would not sell for more than 20 billion. The naked land of our 5 million farms is estimated at about 10 billion, so that leaves but about 10 billion for urban lands—less than one-seventh of the total value. I have no reliable statistics at hand showing what proportion of urban inhabitants own their homes; but we may safely assume that ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... Vaneman, we had probably attained a velocity of something like seven billion four hundred thirteen million miles per second, and that is the approximate speed at which we are now traveling. We must be nearly six quadrillion miles, and that is a space of several hundred light-years—away from our solar system, or, more plainly, about six times as far away ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... the sake of convenience that rubber would remain at its present price, and estimating the cost of working the plantation at say, roughly, 100,000 pounds, why, then it was obvious that the profits would be anything you liked up to two billion a year—while (this was important) more land could doubtless be acquired if the share- holders thought fit. And even if you were certain that a rubber-tree couldn't possibly grow in the Bango-Bango district (as in confidence it couldn't), still it was worth taking ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne

... brilliant stars of a billion lights are seen to fade and pass away, as they wander through the haze of gray. Out of the darkness of the night into the light ...
— The Secret of the Creation • Howard D. Pollyen

... interruption, for three hours, at the rate we have mentioned, of one mile in a minute. This will give us a line one hundred and eighty miles long by one broad, and covering one hundred and eighty square miles. Now, allowing two pigeons to the square yard, we have one billion, one hundred and fifteen million, one hundred and thirty-six thousand pigeons in one flock. As every pigeon consumes fully half a pint of food a day, the quantity required to feed such a flock for one day must be eight million, seven hundred ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen

... a billion ages a bird should come from a far distant clime and carry off in its bill one little grain of sand, the time would finally come when the last grain of sand would be carried away. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... long. This compartment contained six Norcross-Brail engines, each capable of developing 1,150 H.P. The engines were in charge of Auchincloss and two assistant engineers, who had all six engines filling the room with a drowsy drone, like ten billion bees humming themselves to sleep in ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... horticulturists do when getting out scions that have been stored during the winter and the voice of Demeter is calling us to the side of our own wards. How sadly a million nurserymen have thrown away a billion started scions of valuable kinds. My two chestnut scions had gone far beyond the hopeless stage but now perhaps I could be a doctor to them. If my two canary birds could be made to sing ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... drained. One tenth of the surface of Ireland is said to be covered with peat, and small bogs abound in the drift-covered area of New England and the states lying as far west as the Missouri River. In Massachusetts alone it has been reckoned that there are fifteen billion cubic feet of peat, the largest ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... Hohenzollern, who ate up her two babies when she found they disturbed her gentleman friend, hovering over the scene like Schumann-Heink in the Rheingold,—I would not release that reel for less than a billion dollars down! ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... Hebrew-Greek. But why Greek? Why ...?" Another pause in this sequestered chamber where the buzzing of an insect could assume a thunderous roar. "The eternal return. Why should Christ return? Must the earth be saved again and again and a billion times again? Awful thought of a God descending to a horrible death to cleanse the nameless myriads from sins which they seek ever as flies treacle. More ghastly still is the thought that the atheist Scandinavian put into the mouth of his Julian the Apostate: When our Christ is ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... Antwerp, Bremen and Hamburg. She was one of the older vessels in the vast fleet of ships controlled by the American All- Seas and All-Ports Company, and she called wherever there was a port open to trans-Atlantic navigation. She was a single factor in the great monopoly described as the "Billion Dollar Boast." The United States had been slow to recognise the profits of seas that were free, but when she did wake up she proceeded to act as if she owned them and all that therein lay. Her people spoke of the Gulf Stream ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... of the London Statist, and others, have given careful estimates of the direct cost of the war to nations and individuals. During the first and cheapest year, according to Mr. Rossiter, the total cost of the war, not including the economic value of the lives lost, rose to forty billion dollars. That is equal to all the national debts ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy

... your own town's soup-kettle pharmacology that would make you yell for joy! Gee! But the things that man had seen and known! Gee! But the things that man could make you see and know! And he had an automobile," she confided proudly. "It was one of those billion dollar French cars. And I lived just round the corner from the drug-store. But we used to ride ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... sequel. You know what it is when a big river breaks up and a few billion tons of ice go out, jamming and milling and grinding. Just in the thick of it, when the Stewart went out, rumbling and roaring, we sighted Spot out in the middle. He'd got caught as he was trying to cross up above somewhere. ...
— Lost Face • Jack London

... know'st what, in one another's eyes. But in this matter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the palm of this hand—a lipless, unfeatured blank. Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine.—Stand round me, men. Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... from England"—That is the heading under which were grouped the nine lectures given by Miss Helen Fraser at Vassar College. England has borrowed a billion or so of dollars from us, but the obligation is not all her way. The moral strength of our cause is immeasurably increased by her alliance, and the spectacle of a great democracy organizing itself for complete ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser

... American planes. The Allies had looked to America for the production of combat planes in quantity and Congress, responding to popular enthusiasm, had in the first days of the war appropriated more than half a billion dollars for their manufacture. An Aircraft Production Board was organized, with Howard E. Coffin as chairman, although the actual manufacture of the machines was under the supervision of the Signal Corps. Promises were made that by the spring ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... provincial teacher, a colloquial brawl over paying a servant a dollar more a week. Yet this insignificance echoed cellar-plots and cabinet meetings and labor conferences in Persia and Prussia, Rome and Boston, and the orators who deemed themselves international leaders were but the raised voices of a billion Juanitas denouncing a million Carols, with a hundred thousand Vida Sherwins trying ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... long-legged feller what wuz new to the place, stretch out your right hand to him, an' say: 'Welcome to Heaven Long Jim Hart. Come right in an' make yourself to home, 'cause you're goin' to live with us a million an' a billion years, an' all the rest uv the time thar is. Your fishin' pole is down thar by the bank. I've been savin' it fur you. Henry is 'bout a mile farther up the stream pullin' in a whale two hundred feet long that he's had his eye on fur some time. Paul is down thar, settin' under a bush ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... in fact, since King George came to Greece, there are hundreds of thousands of the best Greek patriots that have been killed, slain, or assassinated, and nearly a billion drachmas national debt, hanging upon the neck of every Greek, like the Damoclean sword, but there is no deliverance for the Cretans, and there is no salvation for the Macedonians, instead there are the traps ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden

... revenues: $1.1 billion expenditures: $1.4 billion, including capital expenditures ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... whole world besides this little gang of Europeans. Except, dear God, that they've exterminated all the peoples worth knowing. I can't do with folk who teem by the billion, like the Chinese and Japs and orientals altogether. Only vermin teem by the billion. Higher types breed slower. I would have loved the Aztecs and the Red Indians. I KNOW they hold the element in life which I am looking for—they had ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... probable that the lumber made will in time far exceed any estimate yet placed upon this chief source of the wealth of the State of Washington. Of the fir the estimate has been made that shows still standing enough timber to make 120 billion feet; for the cedar the estimate is 25 billion feet, while the same amount of 25 billion feet is credited to hemlock; 12 billion feet of spruce are claimed, 12 billion feet of yellow pine and probably 6 billion feet of other woods, including maple, alder, oak, yew, ash and ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell

... at last to run his farm, with nobody to help him but a hired man and a high protective terriff. The farms in our State is mortgaged for over seven hundred million dollars. Ten of our Western States—I see by the papers—has got about three billion and a half mortgages on their farms, and that don't count the chattel mortgages filed with the town clerks on farm machinery, stock, waggins, and even crops, by gosh! that ain't two inches high under the snow. That's what the prospects is for farmers now. The Government is rich, but ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... dollars; in 1910 the year's output of approximately two hundred thousand machines was worth two hundred and twenty-five millions. Behind them is a stalwart business representing, with parts and accessory makers, an investment of more than a billion and a quarter of dollars. Four hundred thousand men, or more than five times the strength of our standing army, depend upon it for a livelihood, and more than five millions of people are touched or affected by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... the officer to descend the ladder in baffled fury to the ground below, where his men huddled together in the unfamiliar cold, and stared half fearful at the far-away sun glowing like a yellow arc-light in the depths of space half a billion miles away. ...
— The Space Rover • Edwin K. Sloat

... trenches Writers make a solemn fuss; For the vermin 'n' the stenches Little ladies pity us; But the yearn that's honest dinkum, 'N' the prayer what ain't a sham Is that Fritz may bust 'n' sink 'em Ships of jam, jam, JAM! For we bolt 'em, chew 'em, drink 'em, Million billion bar'ls of ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson

... slowly to his feet and went toward the door, slipping on his coat and cap. "I'm going to whistle for Baree," he said, and went out. The white world was brilliant under the glow of a full moon and a billion stars. It was the most wonderful night he had ever seen, and yet for a few moments he was as oblivious of its amazing beauty, its almost startling vividness, as though he had passed out ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood

... talent of silver is, as estimated, about L390, or $1950, it would seem that the silver accumulated by David would have amounted to nearly two billion dollars, and the gold to a like sum,—altogether four billions, which is plainly impossible. Probably there is a mistake in the figures. We read in the twenty-ninth chapter of Chronicles that David gave to Solomon, out of his own private ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord

... you please. Fifty per cent of our population chickles, and that makes eighty million jaws. When the time came to—ahem—float the proposition, after the bonds, there was an issue of one billion preferred, and two billions of common stock. It did not seem fitting, Miss Appleby, it did not seem dignified, that Wall Street should bandy back and forth such an expression as—ahem—'chewing-gum common.' To the eye, such an ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister

... clearly, following the line with a thick forefinger. "Type M sun. Three planets, intelligent (AA3C) human-type life on second. Oxygen-breathers. Non-mechanical. Religious. Friendly. Unique social structure, described in Galactic Survey Report 33877242. Population estimate: stable at three billion. Basic Cascellan vocabulary taped under Cas33b2. Scheduled for resurvey 2375 A.D. Cache of transformer fuel left, beam coordinate 8741 kgl. Physical descript: ...
— Warrior Race • Robert Sheckley

... nation, and sacred to that fair god whom the Carian water-nymph loved not wisely but too well. For, albeit the children of an ancient union, they marry not, nor are given in marriage, yet withal multiply exceedingly, so that one (not two) may in a single season produce a billion. And at last when autumn comes, won back from the cold god to his hot mother, they know love and wedlock, and die like all married things. These are the Aphides—sometimes unprettily called plant-lice, and vaguely spoken of by the uninformed as "blight"—and they nourish ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... must go down Coldriver Valley to reach a market, Scattergood's maps showed him there were probably a quarter of a million acres—mostly spruce. Estimating with rigid conservatism, this would run eight thousand feet to the acre, or twenty billion feet of timber—and this did not take into consideration hardwood. In Scattergood's secret heart he wanted it all. All he might not be able to get, but he must have more than ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland

... at a minimum of $2 per bushel, and the President later fixed the price at $2.20. This has been high enough to encourage the farmer to increase his crop and not too high to be fair to the consumer. The Department of Agriculture, during the winter of 1917-18, had for its slogan, "a billion-bushel crop for 1918." It has worked intensively to help the farmer in selecting and testing seed and in fighting destructive insects and plant-diseases, and in every way to ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker

... interest as showing that the earth is still in process of formation just as much as it was a billion years ago. We see the same thing in Yellowstone Park. There most decided changes have taken place even in the last eight years. Old Faithful, which used to play regularly every sixty minutes, now does so only once ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... comprises two billions two hundred and fifty millions of cubic miles, forming a spherical body of a diameter of sixty leagues, the weight of which would be three quintillions of tons. To comprehend the meaning of these figures, it is necessary to observe that a quintillion is to a billion as a billion is to unity; in other words, there are as many billions in a quintillion as there are units in a billion. This mass of fluid is equal to about the quantity of water which would be discharged by all the rivers of the earth ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... Pigeon died at the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914. Population estimates ranged up to 5 billion, comprising 40% of the total number of birds in North America ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... dark, the mysterious half-dark, where the gradually deepening twilight blended the distance into the enshrouding pall of gloom. Involuntarily the girl shuddered and started nervously at the splash of an otter. A billion mosquitoes droned their unceasing monotone. The low sound was everywhere—among the branches of the gnarled banskian, above the surface of the river, and on and on and on, to whine ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... like the star what lighted Pale billion to its fated doom, Our nuptial song is blighted, And its rose ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XII, No. 347, Saturday, December 20, 1828. • Various

... had for half a century before over-ridden the whole nation. It was the Tammany minority which ruled the Democracy. It is the minority of syndicates, corporations, and vested interests which crowned itself in our Billion Congress, and is spreading itself in our legislatures. Are the very occurrences, of which so much has been made exhibitions, of the tyranny of all the people; or, are they not rather, with one exception, instances where a graceless minority ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... Sirius, far in the deeps of space, beyond the flight of a cannon-ball flying for a billion years, beyond the range of unaided vision, blazes the star that is our Utopia's sun. To those who know where to look, with a good opera-glass aiding good eyes, it and three fellows that seem in a cluster with it—though they are incredible ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... for chickens and eggs in the United States would doubtless astonish the people of Delos as much as the statistics do us (ipsa suas mirantur Gargara messes!). It is solemnly recorded that the American hen produces a billion and a quarter dozen eggs per annum, of a value greater than that of either the wheat or cotton crops, and yet there are many of us who cannot get our hens to lay more than a hundred eggs ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... mind that once more I had chanced upon a good, and warm, and steadfast heart. Every body is said to be born, whether that happens by night or day, with a certain little widowed star, which has lost its previous mortal, concentrating from a billion billion of miles, or leagues, or larger measure, intense, but generally invisible, radiance upon him or her; and to take for the moment this old fable as of serious meaning, my star was to find bad facts at a glance, but no bad folk without ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... wonder who can come all the way from Missoula to Broadway in one year and win a world's series game is of course entitled to much credit, but this boy certainly fell into a particularly soft spot. With the Macks' billion dollar infield killing base hits for him and the attack getting him eight runs, he would have had a hard time slipping the game to McGraw if he had sold out before hostilities started. Bush permitted ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller

... roses of that little cottage in Brittany, the quiet and peace and promise and vision of a Jeanne d'Arc in the village of Domremy; the blooming of a billion red poppies in the fields of France; the blanketing of the earth with a covering of white snow sufficient to hide the ugliness of war, even for a day, all give promise of the God who, in the end, when he has given man every ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger

... other damn fools who come out two billion miles to scratch rock, as if there weren't enough already on the inner planets. He's got a rich platinum property. Sells ninety percent of his output to buy his power, and the other eleven percent ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell

... were lights visible and invisible. The imperfection of our eye as a detector of ether vibrations was, however, far more serious. The eye could detect ether vibrations lying within a single octave—between 400 to 800 billion vibrations per second. Comparatively slow vibrations of ether did not affect our eye and the disturbances they give rise to well-known as electric waves. The electric waves, predicted by Maxwell, were discovered by Hertz. These waves ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... a billion dollars[52] to France will fix Franco-American history all right for several centuries. Push it through. Such a gift could come to this Kingdom also but for the British stupidity about the Irish for three hundred years. A big loan to Great Britain at a low ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... millions of solar systems in the universe, some of them much greater than ours. There are uncounted planets in space, beside some of which our little earth is a mere toy. Some of these planets are doubtless inhabited. Even on this small earth there are over a billion people. I am one in a number so great that my mind can not grasp such a multitude. Countless billions have gone before and they got along very well before I was born. Countless billions will live and die after I have passed on, and if they hear of me it will probably be by accident. And ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... from either of you. Not a whisper, ye grinning rascals! Cuddle down, little people of Christ's heart and leading. Snuggle close—closer yet, my children—that your arms may grow used to this loving. Another kiss from mother? Blessed Ones! A billion more, for nights and mornings, for all day long of all the years, waiting here on mother's lips. And now to sleep. Christmas is to-morrow. Hush! To-morrow. Yes; to-morrow. Go t' sleep! Go t' sleep!" And upon the flying heels of Night—but still far over seas from the blustering white ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan

... scion. And there's nothing as bad, my father said, as spoiled Smelt. He disowned me, of course. I owned six Cadillacs—one right after the other, I wrecked them all. I traveled all over the world and probably counteracted a billion dollars' worth of foreign aid. I was kicked out of the best ...
— Master of None • Lloyd Neil Goble

... the classifications as to the cause of crime are misleading and worthless. Your existence is the result of infinite chances and causes appalling in their number. Out of a thousand eggs, one is fertilized by perhaps one of a billion sperms, and from this you have been given life. Each of your parents and grandparents and so on, back for two hundred thousand years of human ancestors, and back to infinity before man was born, was the result of the same seemingly blind and almost impossible hazard. The infinitely ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... the hot tears told her heartfelt joy as she sobbed out: 'Charley, I thank you a thousand times. I never expected so nice a cloak. This seems like other days. You are so good, and I am so happy.'" The drink bill of our Nation for last year was over a billion of dollars, more money than was spent for missions—home and foreign—for all of our Churches, for public education, for all the operations of courts of justice and of public officers, and at least for two of the staple products ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy

... in these coils are strong enough to process all the protons so that their axis of spin is brought into alignment. At this point, the plastic could be thought of as representing a few billion tiny ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond

... carry out their missions without adequate equipment. Congress has been generous in funding requests for U.S. troops, but it has resisted fully funding Iraqi forces. The entire appropriation for Iraqi defense forces for FY 2006 ($3 billion) is less than the United States currently spends in Iraq every ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace

... Director, sarcastically. "You don't think I'd risk a billion credits worth of equipment on a wild-goose chase like that, do you? We could use up a year's appropriation of fuel and manpower and still be unable to adequately search a sector one-tenth that size. If he just sat still, a thousand ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow

... harsh in his terms of peace. France was condemned to pay an indemnity of 5,000,000,000 francs (nearly one billion dollars) and certain parts of France were to be occupied by the German troops until this money was fully paid. Two counties of France, Alsace and Lorraine, were to be annexed to Germany. Alsace was inhabited largely by people of German descent, but there were ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet

... time will be at an end, and the burden of flesh accomplished. But you hear it expressed in terms that will astonish Baron Rothschild, what is the progress in liquidation which we make for each particular century. A billion of centuries pays off a quantity equal to a pinch of snuff. Despair seizes a man in contemplating a single coupon, no bigger than a visiting card, of such a stock as this; and behold we have to keep on paying away until ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... kind ov show Tew talk ov chast'ning trials; When thet thar thunder cloud lets down It's sixty billion vials; No! when it looks tew rain on hay, First take yer rake an' then ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford

... business for a so-called American to be in!" said the head Secret Service man to Brown and Martell sternly. "I wouldn't be in your shoes for a billion dollars." ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield

... high bay is the story of the Manhattan Engineer District, the unprecedented 2.2 billion dollar scientific-engineering project that was centered in New Mexico during World War II. The Manhattan Project as it was more commonly called, developed, built, and tested the world's first Atomic bomb in New Mexico. This ...
— Trinity [Atomic Test] Site - The 50th Anniversary of the Atomic Bomb • The National Atomic Museum

... acts projected and made inevitable by his first childish act, it would have changed his whole subsequent life, and he would have become a priest and died obscure in an Italian village, and America would not have been discovered for two centuries afterward. I know this. To skip any one of the billion acts in Columbus's chain would have wholly changed his life. I have examined his billion of possible careers, and in only one of them occurs the discovery of America. You people do not suspect that all of your acts ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... the last brown quail from off the plate, Shouted, "For gods alone such food"; and bade Dian to skip, with bow well bent, and bring A billion birds to grace ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... Nevada Mountains, around and around in a circle, shot through a snow shed forty miles long; then lumber chutes appear many miles in length, through which enormous logs are shot down by water power from the mountain lake. Four billion feet of lumber are cut here ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... return. From their public investments, the people, in fairness, can demand no more; in justice to themselves, they may accept no less. Are they receiving a fair return? The people of the United States have invested nearly a billion dollars in the public school system; each year they contribute nearly half a billion dollars more toward the same end. Are they getting what ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing

... and growing oil exports. Azerbaijan's oil production declined through 1997, but has registered an increase every year since. Negotiation of production-sharing arrangements (PSAs) with foreign firms, which have committed $60 billion to long-term oilfield development, should generate the funds needed to spur future industrial development. Oil production under the first of these PSAs, with the Azerbaijan International Operating Company, began in November 1997. A consortium of Western oil companies began ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... concerning the production of motor vehicles will give an idea of the immensity of America's manufacturing program. The automobile industry as a whole expended one billion three hundred million dollars in order to expand its factories to fill government orders. By the month of October, 1918, 70,000 motor trucks had been sent overseas. At the end of the war, 5-ton and 10-ton trucks were being built at the rate of 1000 a day, and all trucks, ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... method of crossing oceans is adopted, it will of course mean the end of that fantastic medieval anachronism, the Navy. No need for billion-dollar aircraft carriers, battleships, drydocks and all the other cumbersome junk that keeps those boats and things afloat. Give the taxpayer ...
— Navy Day • Harry Harrison

... in the destruction of property about two billion dollars and in prosecuting the war two billion more. No people can lose so much without seriously disarranging the entire mechanism of their government. It is for this reason, therefore, that the measure of "National Aid to Education" has so many and ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... plants took heating below stairs; electricity replaced candles, lamps, and gas fixtures; and the old cook stove gave way to modern ranges of various sorts. The safer and easier the devices, the more human vigilance relaxed. Today, of our half billion dollar fire loss annually, one-fifth of it occurs in the country, and over sixty per cent of residential ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... invented the telephone—that is, he made it work perfectly and brought it to the greatest commercial value, so that a billion men, women and children are using it in nearly all the languages and dialects in the civilized world. But he was very careful to give Dr. Alexander Graham Bell credit for his original work on this ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron

... in the natural history of the "passenger," is their countless numbers. Audubon saw a flock that contained "one billion one hundred and sixteen millions of birds!" Wilson counted, or rather computed, another flock of "two thousand two hundred and thirty millions!" These numbers seem incredible. I have no doubt of their truth. I have no doubt that they are under rather than over ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... of extermination, which caused the loss of three hundred billion dollars in property and thirty millions of human lives, did mark for the time being the "twilight of civilization." The hands on the dial of time had been put back—temporarily, let us hope and pray—a ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... these are invisible to us. Here and there amongst them we find luminous patches or 'nebulae,' which prove to be either clusters of stars or stupendous clouds of glowing gases. Our sun is a solitary blue star on the verge of the Milky Way, 20 billion miles from Alpha Centauri his next-door neighbour. He is travelling in a straight line towards the constellation Hercules at the rate of 20,000 miles an hour, much quicker than a rifle bullet; and, nevertheless, ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... pleas - I tire, I tire of these; But I, the Maker of a billion suns, Ask men to stop the blasphemy of ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... Infinite Without? Bah! Mere lumps of mud going round in a tee-totum dance, and getting hot over it; no more than the spinning of specks in a drop of dirty water. Size was nothing in itself. There were mountains and seas in a morsel of wet mud, picturesque enough for microscopic tourists. A billion billion morsels of wet mud were no more imposing than one. Geology, chemistry, astronomy—they were all in the splashes of mud from a passing carriage. Everywhere one law and one futility. The human race? Strange marine monsters crawling about in the bed of an air-ocean, unable to ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... talking inside of his head, just as it did at that very second inside the heads of thirteen billion other inhabitants of the northwest corner of Earth. The Casseiopeian delegate was so startled that he dropped the dish of almonds, his mouth popping open, his tiny red tongue inside flickering nervously. He ...
— The Stutterer • R.R. Merliss

... a heap too gloomy a religion for a niggah, sah. Dey lams loose at me wid foreord'nation an' preedest'nation, an' how d' bad place is paved wid chil'ens skulls, an' how so many is called, an' only one in a billion beats d' gate; an' fin'lly, las' Sunday, B'rer Peters, he's d' preacher, he ups an' p'ints at me in speshul an' says he sees in a dream how I'm b'ar-hung an' breeze-shaken over hell; an', sah, he simply scare dis niggah to where I jest lay down in d' pew an' howl. After ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... recognize the symptoms. An idea strikes him; he becomes abstracted, reads a great deal, pull down books, fills pages of particularly ruled copy paper with figures from a big, round, black pencil until you might think he was calculating the expenditures of a Billion Dollar Congress. He is not a mathematician but, like Balzac, simply dotes on figures. Then comes the analytical stage and that he performs on foot, walking, head bent forward, upstairs, downstairs, outdoors, around the block, ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

... fifty-one feet high, being aground in sixty-one fathoms. Its appearance was like that of the back of the Isle of Wight, and the cliffs resembled those of the chalk range to the west of Dover. The weight of this mass was calculated to amount to one billion two hundred and ninety two millions three hundred and ninety seven thousand six hundred ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park

... up the canyon has got a billion bottles of booze. Worst whiskey you ever smelled. He says he's laying for you and if you cross his doorstep, he'll shoot ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow

... unlike the "radio" broadcasts of the Twentieth Century. It went out at a frequency of about 1,000 kilocycles, had an amperage of approximately zero, but a voltage of two billion. Properly amplified by the use of inductostatic batteries (a development of the principle underlying the earth induction compass applied to the control of static) this current energized the "A" ionomagnetic coils on the airships, large and sturdy affairs, which ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan

... system, which was started in England 73 years ago, eliminates most of these waste expenses. The system has kept spreading at an astonishing rate; in Great Britain there are now 3 1/2 million members, and more than a billion of sales a year. Other European countries are full of these stores. Many of the retail stores have from twelve thousand to fifty thousand members; their sales run into the millions. They are federated in a wholesale ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... moon had soon dropped down, and May night had fallen soft and warm, enwrapping with its grape-bloom colour and its scents the billion caprices, intrigues, passions, longings, and regrets of men and women. Happy was Jack Cardigan who snored into Imogen's white shoulder, fit as a flea; or Timothy in his "mausoleum," too old for anything but baby's slumber. For so many lay awake, or dreamed, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... chiliad; millennium, thousand years, grand [Coll.]; myriad; ten thousand, ban [Jap.], man [Jap.]; ten thousand years, banzai [Jap.]; lac, one hundred thousand, plum; million; thousand million, milliard, billion, trillion &c V. centuriate^; quintuplicate. Adj. five, quinary^, quintuple; fifth; senary^, sextuple; sixth; seventh; septuple; octuple; eighth; ninefold, ninth; tenfold, decimal, denary^, decuple^, tenth; eleventh; duodenary^, duodenal; twelfth; in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... played in the only tie in the first round the rest being byes—we arrive at the result that there were 268,435,457 teams or 1,073,741,828 men playing. Might not just a small percentage of these, if brought over to France, decide the issue at once in favour of the Allies? Some of the four or five billion ponies might also be utilised for remounts and for transport. Nor should the committee which successfully managed this tournament be lost sight of. They showed a power of organisation which could scarcely fail to be of use now at the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various

... forbears in America and elsewhere. Mr Bonar Law, in a recent interview in the Observer, stated that we had sent back to the United States practically the whole of our holdings of American securities to be sold or pledged as collateral for loans, and that the value of them was three billion dollars—L600 millions sterling. Any of them that have only been pledged can presumably be used to meet the loans raised as they fall due, and so will lighten our burden in the matter of repayment. These loans raised abroad are the second mode of foreign financing. By it we ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers

... hazarded a lone optimist, "Hamilton Burton recognizes no conventions of finance; he heeds no laws. He's the most brilliant brigand in the Street—and every hand is against him. He's always just one jump behind a billion dollars—but also he may find himself just one jump ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... one has to be awfully careful about in Twickenham Town, and not for a billion dollars put in my pocket would I hurt anybody's here, and I couldn't let Miss Araminta or Miss Susanna think for a moment that their dresses were not all right, and how to get them new ones I couldn't imagine. I started to pray about it, and then I remembered I was ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher

... In actual cash this cost Canada four hundred million dollars, not counting land grants and private subscriptions for stock, which would bring up the cost of binding the provinces together to a billion. This was a staggering burden for a country with smaller population than Greater New York—a burden as big as Japan and Russia assumed for their war; but, like war, the expenditure was a fight for national existence. Without ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... three-year certificates at ninety-eight, two-year certificates at ninety-nine, and one-year certificates at par. This loan will be free from the interest (coupon) tax, but not from the income and inheritance taxes. In case of success one billion worth of these certificates will ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various

... one thousand, eight hundred and two holders, monopolized one thousand, two hundred and eight billion eight hundred million (1,208,800,000,000) board feet of standing timber—each a foot square and an inch thick. These figures are so stupendous that they are meaningless without a hackneyed device to bring their ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin

... miles to the Uncompahgre Valley through a tunnel in the solid rock. The great Roosevelt dam on the Salt River in Arizona with its gigantic curved wall of masonry 280 feet high, created a lake with a capacity of fifty-six billion cubic feet, and watered in 1915 ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland

... Henry Burns, "but I don't mind saying I'm tired. I wouldn't stir out of this place again to-night for sixteen billion dol—" ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith

... quite, two billion dollars a year are spent by the people of the United States for intoxicating beverages. Between fifty and seventy-five million bushels of grain are consumed annually in their production, besides the grapes used for wines. Nor does the money spent for liquors go in any appreciable degree into ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... its real founder, who was the twenty-fourth, and possibly Parsva or Parasnath, the twenty-third and the founder's preceptor, are or may be historical. The other twenty-two Tirthakars are purely mythical. The first, Rishaba, was born more than 100 billion years ago, as the son of a king of Ajodhya; he lived more than 8 million years, and was 500 bow-lengths in height. He therefore is as superhuman as any god, and his date takes us back almost to eternity. The others succeeded each other ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... emergency he naturally thought of Schwab. How well I recall the fine force and vigor in his expression when, rising from his chair and standing with clenched fist pointed at me, he said in substance:—'The President ought to send for Schwab and hand him a treasury warrant for a billion dollars and set him to work building ships, with no government inspectors or supervisors or accountants or auditors or other red tape to bother him. Let the President just put it up to Schwab's patriotism and put Schwab on ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... to the world of fact, and that the uniqueness of individuals is the objective truth. As the number of units taken diminishes, the amount of variety and inexactness of generalization increases, because individuality tells for more and more. Could you take men by the thousand billion, you could generalize about them as you do about atoms; could you take atoms singly, it may be that you would find them as individual as your aunts and cousins. That concisely is the minority belief, ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... matter-duplicator receiver misread OCH{3}CH{3}OH, to turn out a magnificently busted blonde sphygmomano-raiser with an HOCH{3}OH replacement, putting a strain on the loyalty of a billion teen-age girls dedicated to Doyle Oglevie worship. Doyle-she insisted she was Doyle-he, as it took quite a while for her hormones to overcome the memory of his easy, eyelash-flapping, tone-torturing microphone conquests. Put a strain on ...
— The Glory of Ippling • Helen M. Urban

... world. Such would be the development of our national resources, the construction of railways, roads, waterworks and the like; social and political reforms; progress in the care of public health, in education and in scientific research. It is proposed that the next congress should spend half a billion dollars on the army and navy. It is possible that on a plebiscite vote, exactly under existing conditions, a majority would vote to make the department of war a department of public works, military defence being only one of its functions, and to spend the ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86



Words linked to "Billion" :   United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America, United Kingdom, U.S.A., UK, large integer, USA, US, Great Britain, trillion, cardinal, U.K., large indefinite quantity, large indefinite amount, America, United States, milliard, one million million, Britain, the States, one thousand million, U.S.



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