Usage Note
Billón is a critical false friend: in Spanish it means one million million (10¹²), the same as the English 'trillion'. The English 'billion' (10⁹) is mil millones in Spanish. This difference often causes major errors in financial or scientific texts. The plural is billones.
Examples
"El presupuesto supera un billón de euros."
Natural Translation
The budget exceeds one trillion euros.

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