Other forms: bills, billed, billing
A bill is the piece of paper that tells you what you owe. The waiter brings it face down on a saucer at the end of the meal; the electricity bill drops through the door on the first of the month.
Americans ask for the check in a restaurant and keep bill for paper money — a ten-dollar bill, a crumpled twenty. In politics a bill is a law that has not passed yet: it stays a bill while it is argued over and becomes an act once the vote goes through, so calling a law on the books a bill is a real mistake. A bird's bill is its beak. As a verb you bill someone — the garage billed me twice for one repair. And the fixed phrases run everywhere: you foot the bill when you pay it, a thing fits the bill when it is exactly what was wanted, and a clean bill of health means nothing is wrong with you.
1nounbillA written statement of what you owe for goods, work or a service.~2%
“We asked for the bill and split it three ways.”
Patternthe bill for + noun · ask for / pay / split the bill · a £40 bill · foot the bill
2nounproposedA proposed law, written down and still being argued over.~94%
“The bill passed its second reading on Tuesday.”
3nounbanknoteIn American English, a banknote.~2%
“He paid with a crumpled twenty-dollar bill.”
4verbsendTo send someone a demand for payment.~2%
“They billed us for a night we never stayed.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 7 sentences found in the wild and placed 7 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: check
bILL → one look at it and you feel ILL
One look at the bill and you feel ill: it is always more than you thought.
hooks ontoill
Three separate words wore down into this one spelling. The bill you pay comes through Old French bulle from Medieval Latin bulla, a seal — the lump of wax or lead that made a document official, so a bill was the sealed paper before it was the sum on it. The bird's bill is Old English bile, a beak. And a third bill was Old English bil, a hooked point, a curved weapon, a two-edged sword, from a root meaning to strike.
Medieval Latin
bulla — seal, sealed document
Old French
bulle
Anglo-Norman
bille
Middle English
bille
English, today
bill
From Middle English bille, from Anglo-Norman bille, from Old French bulle, from Medieval Latin bulla (“seal, sealed document”). a doublet of bull#Etymology 2 and bulla.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA