五十亿 (wǔ shí yì) — five billion | TongTong Chinese Dictionary

Definition

numeral

five billion

Examples

五十亿。
Zhè ge xiàng mù de tóu zī é gāo dá wǔ shí yì měi yuán.
The investment amount for this project is as high as 5 billion dollars.
五十亿。
Gōng sī qù nián de zǒng shōu rù chāo guò le wǔ shí yì.
The company's total revenue last year exceeded 5 billion.
五十亿。
Zhè ge jī jīn huì de zī chǎn dá dào le wǔ shí yì yuán.
The assets of this foundation reached 5 billion yuan.

Origin

Characters in this word

A drawing of the thing itself, worn down over three thousand years into a few strokes.

An older form had a crossed mark between a top bar and a bottom bar. The modern 五 keeps those bars, while the original idea is uncertain.

Open 五 →

An abstract idea shown by a mark or a diagram rather than by a picture of an object.

The early shape 十 was mostly a single vertical stroke, sometimes with a dot, and later gained a horizontal stroke to form a cross. For the number ten, it marked the next digit above one.

Open 十 →

Most characters — around four in five — are built this way: one part hints at the meaning, the other at the pronunciation.

This origin belongs to the traditional form 億; 亿 is its simplified writing.

Meaning part形符xíngfú

人人rén

Sound part声符shēngfú

意

意yì億yì

Same sound today

The traditional form 億 pairs 人 (person) with 意 for its sound; the simplified 亿 is a later shorthand, so its parts are not the original pieces.

Open 亿 →

Appears in