gillion
/ˈɡɪljən/
"gillion" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“gillion” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a numeral. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A thousand million, proposed as an alternative to the (now little used) British milliard and the (ambiguous, in the UK) US billion.
Corpus desk
Index EN-gillion · gillion · English
gillion · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "G" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | gillion |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Numeral |
| IPA | /ˈɡɪljən/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “gillion” in English
Rare enough to double-check
gillion is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anumeral, transcribed /ˈɡɪljən/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "A thousand million, proposed as an alternative to the (now little used) British milliard and the (ambiguous, in the UK) US billion.".
gillion has no tracked misspelling variants, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From gi(ga)- + -illion. Modelled after million, billion etc. Compare also jillion. The correct English form is gillion, spelled G-I-L-L-I-O-N.
Definition
- 1A thousand million, proposed as an alternative to the (now little used) British milliard and the (ambiguous, in the UK) US billion.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how gillion appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
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 o…
Etymology
From gi(ga)- + -illion. Modelled after million, billion etc. Compare also jillion.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.