- 1億萬富翁（台灣「一億」是 100 million，美式 billion 是「十億」；口頭仍用這句，對齊「百萬富翁」）
A billionaire is a person who has a billion or more in money — usually dollars or pounds. A billion here is a thousand million: 1,000,000,000. People use the word for the very richest: owners of huge companies, names on 'richest in the world' lists, people who could buy almost anything and still have money left. It is not a job. It is a label for a scale of wealth most of us never meet. Newspapers also stretch it. Someone whose money is mostly shares on paper still gets called a billionaire, and 'the billionaire class' means the super-rich as a group. In casual talk, 'I want to be a billionaire' is the new version of an older joke about being a millionaire. Though actually, the number has a messy past. For a long time British English used billion to mean a million million — what most people now call a trillion. American English used billion for a thousand million, and that meaning has almost completely won, in news, in business, and in this word. When someone says billionaire today, they mean the thousand-million kind. Older British books can still trip you. The word is common and not rude, but talking about someone's money this way can feel nosy.
From the word’s history
From billion + -aire.
由 billion「十億」加 -aire 組成。
組成billion + French -aire, 'a person who has that', on the pattern of millionaire. Billion itself is French bi- ('two') + million. Million comes from Italian milione, a 'big thousand', from mil / mille (Latin mille, 'thousand') + the Italian ending -one.
同家族的字
- millionairethe older 'rich person' word this one was modelled on; same -aire ending
- billionthe number a billionaire is said to have at least one of
原始詞典資料1 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，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。
billionairenoun/ˌbɪl.i.əˈnɛə(ɹ)/
- 1
Somebody whose wealth is at least one billion (10⁹) currency units (usually understood to exclude holders of hyperinflated currencies).
- Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers.[…]Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster. Clever financial ploys are what have made billionaires of the industry’s veterans. “Operational improvement” in a portfolio company has often meant little more than promising colossal bonuses to sitting chief executives if they meet ambitious growth targets. That model is still prevalent today.
- The ranks of the billionaire class last year grew by just over 200 to nearly 2,770 people. Their wealth skyrocketed by $2.1 trillion — three times faster than the year before — to a total of $15 trillion. In the United States alone, where 816 billionaires reside, the net worth of this group soared by $1.4 trillion.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。