gillion

G2I1L1L1I1O1N1
/ˈɡɪljən//ˈd͡ʒɪljən/

numeral

A thousand million, proposed as an alternative to the (now little used) British milliard and the (ambiguous, in the UK) US billion.

Scrabble 8

Meanings

numeral
  1. UKrareA thousand million, proposed as an alternative to the (now little used) British milliard and the (ambiguous, in the UK) US billion.
    1 more example

    The internationally agreed symbol for 10^6 is M and this is the initial letter of million. Would it not be logical and convenient to turn this happy accident into a principle and use G, the internationally agreed symbol for 10^9, as the initial letter of the word for 1,000,000,000? That number would thus be called a gillion. Whether the g should be hard or soft is a matter of opinion. I incline to hard because of the derivation from giga.

    1968, N. W. Pirie, More About the Units (Nature vol. 220)
noungillion (plural gillions)

plural gillions

  1. excessiveslangAn unspecified large number (of).

    At Guy's school there had been an outdoor pool, in use from April to October, a watery grave for a billion insects, or quite possibly a gillion or a squillion. The bright turquoise lining had wrinkled under the children's feet.

    2012, Rebecca Smith, A Bit of Earth
    1 more example

    I looked down to see my dog, Roof, short for Rufus, curled in sleep below the window, unworried by the wings of hummingbirds whirring at speeds of a gillion miles an hour as they flitted in and out of the trumpets of honeysuckle growing on the side of the house.

    2022, Frank Voss, My House Was Not a Home

Synonyms & antonyms

Origin

Rhymes & wordplay

Rhymes with gillion

All rhymes →

Sounds the same

jillionGillianJillian stripped-by-parse_pron_post_template_fnjillionGillianJillian stripped-by-parse_pron_post_template_fn
Cite this entry
APA

gillion. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/gillion

MLA

“gillion.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/gillion. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “gillion,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/gillion.

Source: gillion on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.