million

[mil-yuh n] /ˈmɪl yən/
noun, plural millions (as after a numeral) million.
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 pounds, dollars, or francs:
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
7.
amounting to one million in number.
8.
amounting to a very great number:
a million things to do.
Origin
1350-1400; Middle English milioun < Middle French < early Italian millione, equivalent to mille thousand (< Latin) + -one augmentative suffix
Related forms
multimillion, noun
Examples from the web for million
  • One-fifth of all public school students-ten million children-live in rural areas.
  • Army didn't bother to properly test five million body armor plates that were supposed to protect soldiers on the battlefield.
  • All it did was hide half a million or a million jobless people from the statistics.
  • Today some of his canvases can fetch a million dollars.
  • The study suggests that the human and chimp lineages initially split off from a single ape species about ten million years ago.
  • Early humans living about one million years ago were extremely close to extinction.
  • Beyond that welcome, the bones of six million people line the dim tunnels.
  • The period lasted altogether, it is now supposed, upwards of two hundred million years.
  • We treat about ten million people a year to prevent onchocerciasis, or river blindness.
  • Water molded this underworld four to six million years ago.
British Dictionary definitions for million

million

/ˈmɪljən/
noun (pl) -lions, -lion
1.
the cardinal number that is the product of 1000 multiplied by 1000 See also number (sense 1)
2.
a numeral, 1 000 000, 106, M, etc, representing this number
3.
(often pl) (informal) an extremely large but unspecified number, quantity, or amount: I have millions of things to do
determiner
4.
preceded by a 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
5.
(Austral, informal) gone a million, done for; sunk
related
prefix mega-
Word Origin
C17: via Old French from early Italian millione, from mille thousand, from Latin
Word Origin and History for million
n.

late 14c., from Old French million (late 13c.), from Italian millione (now milione), literally "a great thousand," augmentative of mille "thousand," from Latin mille, which is of uncertain origin. Used mainly by mathematicians until 16c. India, with its love of large numbers, had names before 3c. for numbers well beyond a billion. The ancient Greeks had no name for a number greater than ten thousand, the Romans for none higher than a hundred thousand. "A million" in Latin would have been decies centena milia, literally "ten hundred thousand." Million to one as a type of "long odds" is attested from 1761. Related: Millions.

Idioms and Phrases with million

million

see: