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Indefinite and fictitious numbers



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"Zillion" redirects here. For other uses, see Zillion (disambiguation).

The English language has a number of words for indefinite and fictitious numbers —
inexact terms of indefinite size, used for comic effect, for exaggeration, as
placeholder names, or when precision is unnecessary or undesirable.





Contents

[hide]

* General placeholder names
* Umpteen
* -illion
* Well-defined numbers that are not precisely known
* See also
* References




[edit] General placeholder names


* a few
* a couple (although this generally has the specific value two, it is also used less
  precisely)
* couple-few, coupla-few or couple-three]
* some-odd
* bunch, as in "a whole bunch of..."
* several
* many
* n-something. Used especially to indicate someone's age within a decade, e.g.,
  twentysomething.
* eleventy-; e.g., "eleventy-four". Occasionally used to mean 110.
* lots
* plenty
* scads
* heaps
* mess (as in "a mess of fish")
* buckets
* a grip
* loads (e.g., truckloads, busloads, etc.)
* oodles
* tons (occasionally refers to multiples of 2000)
* expletive-load or expletive-ton, e.g. "shit-load". Sometimes prefixed with "metric"
  or "imperial".
* mumblety, especially done, often tongue-in-cheek, to conceal an exact value, as in
  "I shall be mumblety-two this year"


[edit] Umpteen


Umpteen is a term for an unspecified but reasonably large number, used in a humorous
fashion or to imply that it is not worth the effort to pin down the actual figure.
Despite the -teen ending, which would seem to indicate that it lies between 12 and 20,
umpteen can be used in ways implying it is much larger than that—if it ever could be
pinned down.

According to one dictionary, the word is derived from the slang ump(ty), a dash in Morse
code (of imitative origin), plus -teen.]


[edit] -illion


 Find this word in Wikisaurus: zillion

Words ending in the sound "-illion", such as zillion,] jillion,] and gazillion,] are
often used as fictitious names for an unspecified, large number by analogy to names of
large numbers such as million, billion and trillion. Their size is dependent upon the
context, but can typically be considered large enough to be unfathomable.

These terms are often used as hyperbole or for comic effect, or in loose, unconfined
conversation to present an un-guessably large number. Since these are undefined, they
have no mathematical validity and no accepted order, since none is necessarily larger or
smaller than any of the others.

The "-illion" concept is so well established that it is the basis of a joke, in which a
speaker misunderstands the word Brazilian (being from the nation of Brazil) as an
enormous number called "brazillion".]

Many similar words are used, such as bajillion] , bazillion], dillion,] fantillion,]
gadzillion,] gagillion,] gajillion,] godzillion,] grillion,] hojillion,] kabillion,]
kajillion,] katrillion,] killion,] robillion,] skillion,] squidillion[citation needed],
squillion,] and umptillion.]

These words can be transformed into ordinal numbers or fractions by the usual pattern of
appending the suffix -th, e.g., "I asked her for the zillionth time."


[edit] Well-defined numbers that are not precisely known


* Sagan's number is the number of stars in the observable universe. It is named in
  honor of the late Carl Sagan who was often mocked for saying that there were "billions
  and billions" of them].

Arguably, this number is perfectly well defined, since we know what stars are and what
the observable universe is. Yet, its value is known only with considerable uncertainty.
Sagan's number is unrelated to the bogus sagan unit or the humorous use the term "sagan"
to denote any large quantity]]


[edit] See also


* List of unusual units of measurement
* List of humorous units of measurement
* Powers of 10
* Names of large numbers
* Googol
* Googolplex
* Inherently funny word


[edit] References



1. ^ "Urban Dictionary: a couple three". www.urbandictionary.com.
   http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=a%20couple%20three. Retrieved
   2010-02-08. 
2. ^ American Heritage Dictionary, 4th edn.
3. ^ a b Pratchett, Terry (2002). Witches Abroad. HarperCollins.  ISBN 0-06-102061-3.
   p. 146: "And you owe me a million billion trillion zillion squillion dollars."
4. ^ p. 1103, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, vol.
   2, edited by Eric Partridge, Tom Dalzell, and Terry Victor, Taylor & Francis, 2006,
   ISBN 041525938X.
5. ^ Included in the standard dictionary included with Microsoft Word word-processing
   software.
6. ^ Christensen, Chris (2008). "How Many is a Brazillion?".
   http://chris2x.com/2005/09/23/how-many-is-abrazillion/. 
7. ^ Bates, Karen G. (2005). Plain Brown Wrapper. HarperCollins.  ISBN 0-380-80891-9.
   p. 86: "Well, yes, it was, and the rumor that there were seventy bajillion women to
   every man just wouldn't die..."
8. ^ Harrison, Colin (2001). Afterburn. St. Martin's Press.  ISBN 0-312-97870-7. p.
   278: "I wouldn't sleep with him in a bazillion years, but I'm not scared of him."
9. ^ a b Resop, Jay (1 April 2004). "Neglected Character Deathmatch: Zadok vs Birdo
   vs Geno". Neglected Mario Characters. SMBHQ. http://www.smbhq.com/nc/death19.html.
   Retrieved 23 May 2008. "Duh nah timez a billion million zillion trillion killion
   dillion!" 
10. ^ Any, Ziers (1502). What soda Was That While. Tor/Forge.  ISBN 0-5655-7543-1.
    p. 791: "The taste danced across his tongue with the force of Fantillion
    concentrated sunbeams."
11. ^ Cooke, Kaz (2003). Bun in the Oven. Ten Speed Press.  ISBN 1-58008-531-8. p.
    3: "...and then the editor asked a gadzillion questions..."
12. ^ Lawrence, Martha C. (1996). Murder in Scorpio. St. Martin's Press.  ISBN
    0-312-95984-2. p. 114: "The brochures basically told the same story Stan had given
    me: Pacific Properties owned a gagillion places that generated a gagillion dollars."
13. ^ Southworth, Samuel A. (2004). U.S. Armed Forces Arsenal: A Guide to Modern
    Combat Hardware. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-81318-1.  p. 98: "The expectation was
    that the Soviets would roll a gajillion of their ever-improving but still basic
    tanks across the landscape..."
14. ^ Franzen, Jonathan (2001). Strong Motion. Picador.  ISBN 0-312-42051-X. p. 395:
    "She believes there's a zillion gallons of oil and a godzillion cubic meters of
    natural gas inside the earth, beginning at a depth of about four miles, and no
    anvil-headed senior research chemist with a crew cut and stinky breath is going to
    tell her it isn't so."
15. ^ Kelley, Brent (2001). The Pastime in Turbulence: Interviews with Baseball
    Players of the 1940s. McFarland and Company.  ISBN 0-7864-0975-4. p. 8: "After that,
    even expansion and grillion-dollar salaries could not harm it."
16. ^ Holkins, Jerry; Krahulik, Mike (2001-06-22). "Magic: It's What's For Dinner!".
    Penny Arcade. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/06/22. 
17. ^ Hodgman, Ann (1999). Beat That!. Houghton Mifflin Cookbooks.  ISBN
    0-395-97178-0. p. 115: "That's about all I remember, except for this salad and the
    ninety kabillion manicotti someone else brought."
18. ^ Steven Schragis and Rick Frishman (2006). 10 Clowns Don't Make a Circus. Adams
    Media.  ISBN 1-59337-555-7. p. 122: "You are not going to sell a kajillion of
    anything just because it's the coolest little gizmo you ever saw or because your
    Uncle Ernie said you would."
19. ^ Howe, James (2003). Tales From the House of Bunnicula #4: Screaming Mummies of
    the Pharaoh's Tomb II. Atheneum Books for Young Readers.  ISBN 0-689-83954-5 p.2 "He
    [Uncle Harold] has been writing for a katrillion years and his books have sold a
    katrillion copies, even if he has gotten some stinko reviews."
20. ^ Hanneman, George (1988). The Creeping Game. The Times.  ISBN 0-233-83992-X. p.
    19 "It was the robillionth time they had done it, but it was as fun as ever before."
21. ^ Kean, Rob (2000). The Pledge. Warner Books.  ISBN 0-446-60848-3. p. 429: "Sure
    enough, I found a skillion articles from about a dozen years ago, accounts of the
    events and aftermath of Cherry Plain."
22. ^ Anthony, Piers (2002). How Precious Was That While. Tor/Forge.  ISBN
    0-8125-7543-1. p. 121: "Your best place, geographically, to bridge across the river
    is surrounded by Hell's Bells Bog, so deep it would take fifteen umptillion tons of
    special fill to stabilize it, putting you over your budget."
23. ^ Sizing up the Universe - Stars, Sand and Nucleons - Numericana
24. ^ William Safire, ON LANGUAGE; Footprints on the Infobahn, New York Times, April
    17, 1994
25. ^ Sagan at dictionary.reference.com (definition from the Jargon File)


Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indefinite_and_fictitious_numbers"


Categories: Large numbers | Placeholder names

Hidden categories: All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced
statements from May 2010









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