million

[ mil-yuhn ]

noun

, plural mil·lions, (as after a numeral) mil·lion.

1. a cardinal number, a thousand times one thousand.
2. a symbol for this number, as 1,000,000 or M̅.
3. millions, a number between 1,000,000 and 999,999,999, as in referring to an amount of money:

   His fortune was in the millions of dollars.

4. the amount of a thousand thousand units of money, as dollars, pounds, or euros:

   The three Dutch paintings fetched a million.

5. a very great number of times:

   Thanks a million.

6. the million(s), the mass of the common people; the multitude:

   poetry for the millions.

adjective

1. amounting to one million in number.
2. amounting to a very great number:

   a million things to do.

million

/ ˈmɪljən /

noun

1. See number
   the cardinal number that is the product of 1000 multiplied by 1000 See also number
2. a numeral, 1 000 000, 10 ⁶, M, etc, representing this number
3. informal.
   often plural an extremely large but unspecified number, quantity, or amount

   I have millions of things to do

determiner

1. preceded bya or by a numeral
   1. amounting to a million

      a million light years away

   2. ( as pronoun )

      I can see a million under the microscope

2. gone a million informal.
   gone a million done for; sunk

Other Words From

• multi·million noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of million¹

First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English milioun, from Middle French, from Old Italian millione ( Italian milione ), equivalent to mille “thousand” (from Latin mīlle ) + -one, augmentative suffix

Word History and Origins

Origin of million¹

C17: via Old French from early Italian millione, from mille thousand, from Latin

Idioms and Phrases

see feel like oneself (a million dollars) ; look like a million dollars ; one in a million .

Example Sentences

Once that happened, the combined approximately 3 million landing pages exploded in SERPs.

From Search Engine Land

She was talking about operationalizing SEO and saying that anyone touching the website could be making multi-million-dollar SEO decisions without realizing it.

From Search Engine Land

The salt deposits are young—some just a couple of million years old.

From MIT Technology Review

Most of its fossils date to the Mesozoic, between 252 and 66 million years ago.

From Science News For Students

Now, a fossil bed of brachiopods in Yunnan, China, offers strong evidence for parasites from almost 100 million years earlier.

From Science News For Students

Added to drinking water at concentrations of around one part per million, fluoride ions stick to dental plaque.

From The Daily Beast

It was a very faithful homage to a Six Million Dollar Man episode.

From The Daily Beast

According to the USDA, student participation began to fall, with 1.4 million students opting out of the lunch program entirely.

From The Daily Beast

In 2008, Huckabee raised a little over $16 million, with less than $55,000 coming from political action committees.

From The Daily Beast

By contrast, John McCain, the eventual GOP nominee, had raised approximately $12.7 million in the first quarter of 2007 alone.

From The Daily Beast

The moon was coming up, and its mystic shimmer was casting a million lights across the distant, restless water.

From Project Gutenberg

Clodd tells us that one cubic inch of rotten stone contains 41 thousand million vegetable skeletons of diatoms.

From Project Gutenberg

What are a few paltry, lumps of crystallised carbon compared to a galaxy of a million million suns?

From Project Gutenberg

We were then nine million small arm still to the good having spent eleven million.

From Project Gutenberg

In the first place, there is an immediate and urgent demand for at least Half a Million comfortable rain-proof dwellings.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• bank
• lot
• much
• sum
• thousand
• ton
• total
• trillion