(~s)
Frequency: The word is one of the 700 most common words in English.
Note: The plural form is '~' after a number, or after a word or expression referring to a number, such as ‘several’ or ‘a few’.
1.
A ~ or one ~ is the number 1,000,000.
Up to five ~ people a year visit the county...
Profits for 1999 topped ?100 ~.
NUM
2.
If you talk about ~s of people or things, you mean that there is a very large number of them but you do not know or do not want to say exactly how many.
The programme was viewed on television in ~s of homes.
QUANT-PLURAL: QUANT of pl-n