喜樂美語

核心畫面

You can picture billion as a single, very tall stack of zeros standing for one specific number — in today's English, 1,000,000,000 (a thousand million). The word is built from 'bi-' (two) on top of 'million', and that 'two' is exactly why the number is slippery: historically it meant 'the second power' of a million. From that one fixed number two side-doors open — one where the huge size, not the exact count, is what matters ('billions of stars'), and one old British room where the same word pointed at a much bigger number.

可以把 billion 想成一疊很高的零，代表一個確定的數字——在現代英文裡就是 1,000,000,000（十億，…更多收起可以把 billion 想成一疊很高的零，代表一個確定的數字——在現代英文裡就是 1,000,000,000（十億，也就是一千個百萬）。這個字是 bi-（二）加在 million（百萬）上面，而那個「二」正是它會讓人搞混的原因：在歷史上它本來指「百萬的第二次方」。從這個固定的數字長出兩道側門——一道是重點不在精確數字、而在「多到嚇人」（billions of stars，數十億顆星），另一道則是舊式英式英文裡，同一個字指著一個大得多的數。

From the word’s history

From French 'billion' (1680s), coined as 'bi-' (two) + 'million' to mean 'the second power of a million' (a million million). French later re-cut it into groups of three to mean 'a thousand million', and the US adopted that value; Britain long kept the older 'million million'. This split is exactly why senses 1 and 3 disagree on the number.

源自法文 billion（1680年代），由 bi-（二）＋ million（百萬）造出，本義是「百萬的第二次方」（即百萬乘百萬）。後來法文改以每三位一組來切，變成「一千個百萬」，美國採用了這個值；英國則長期保留較舊的「百萬乘百萬」。義項一和義項三在數字上對不上，正是這段分裂留下的痕跡。

etymonline.com/word/billion

From the picture

誇張的多

從「一個確切的大數」鬆手，只留下「大」的感覺：人不再真的去數，而是借這個本來就很大的數來表示「多到數不完」。

huge number (informal) · number · B2

A very large number of things or people, used to mean 'a huge amount' rather than an exact count.

無數／好多

舊式英式的值：兆

同一個字、同一個 bi-（二），但沿著「百萬的第二次方」這條老路走：在舊式英式用法裡，它指的是百萬乘百萬，比現代值大了一千倍。

billion (old British, trillion) · number · B2

In old British use, the number 1,000,000,000,000, which is one million million.

兆（舊式英式用法）

Also in this word

billion (number) · number · B2

The number 1,000,000,000, which is one thousand million.

十億

原始詞典資料3 筆記錄

以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。

billionnum/ˈbɪljən/

  • 1

    Either of two large amounts:

    • At the last assessment it [the national debt] amounts to seven billion pounds (£7,000,000,000).
    • In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who received unsolicited adverts through the post, only 3% bought anything as a result.
  • 2

    datedEither of two large amounts:

    • n = 1,000,000,000,000, that is, = a billion, or the square of a million
    • There is a bill to be picked up for cleaning the former Soviet countries of £1 billion. By that I mean a British billion, because when I was little I was told that a billion was a million million and then the Americans said that it was a thousand million. Well, I am talking about a million million pounds worth of clean-up to be done.
  • 3

    An unspecified very large number.

    • Near-synonyms: gazillion; see also Thesaurus:zillion
    • There were billions of people at the concert.

資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。