Billionaire
nounA person whose wealth amounts to at least a billion units of currency.
How to spell billionaire
11 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce billionaire
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does billionaire mean?
- nounA person whose wealth amounts to at least a billion units of currency.
Billionaire in a sentence
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The tech billionaire donated a large share of his fortune to medical research.
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Only a handful of people on the list crossed the threshold from millionaire to billionaire.
Where does billionaire come from?
Language of origin: French
This word is a fairly recent coinage built directly on the model of 'millionaire'. The base 'billion' comes from French, where it was formed in the sixteenth century from the prefix bi- (meaning 'two', because a billion was originally a million raised to the second power) joined to 'million'. The ending -aire is a French agent suffix meaning roughly 'one who possesses', the same element that gives us 'millionaire' and 'questionnaire'. English speakers in the nineteenth century took the established pattern of 'millionaire' and simply swapped in the larger quantity, so 'billionaire' arose as a natural extension once such enormous fortunes became conceivable. The two spelling traps both come from these roots: the doubled letter 'l' inherited from 'billion', and the French-style '-aire' ending that an English ear expects to spell as plain '-air'.
How the word is built
- billion (a thousand million)
- -aire (French agent suffix meaning 'one who has', as in millionaire)
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