Many languages have words expressing indefinite and fictitious numbers—inexact terms of indefinite size, used for comic effect, for exaggeration, as
placeholder name
Placeholder names are words that can refer to things or people whose names do not exist, are temporarily forgotten, are not relevant to the salient point at hand, are to avoid stigmatization, are unknowable/unpredictable in the context in wh ...
s, or when precision is unnecessary or undesirable. One technical term for such words is "non-numerical vague quantifier". Such words designed to indicate large quantities can be called "indefinite hyperbolic numerals".
Specific values used as indefinite
* In
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
, some words that have a precise numerical definition are often used indefinitely: couple, 2;
dozen
A dozen (commonly abbreviated doz or dz) is a grouping of twelve.
The dozen may be one of the earliest primitive integer groupings, perhaps because there are approximately a dozen cycles of the Moon, or months, in a cycle of the Sun, or year ...
cardinal number
In mathematics, cardinal numbers, or cardinals for short, are a generalization of the natural numbers used to measure the cardinality (size) of sets. The cardinality of a finite set is a natural number: the number of elements in the set. T ...
s these can be pluralized, in which case they require ''of'' before the noun (''millions of dollars'', but ''five million dollars'') and require the indefinite article "a" in the singular (''a million letters'' (indefinite) but ''one million letters'' (definite)).
* In various Middle Eastern traditions, the number 40 is used to express a large but unspecific number,"Biblical Criticism", ''The Classical Journal'' 36:71:83''ff'' (March 1827 full text /ref> as in the
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach" '' Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
"Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" ( ar, علي بابا والأربعون لصا) is a folk tale from the '' One Thousand and One Nights''. It was added to the collection in the 18th century by its French translator Antoine Galland, who hear ...
'', and the
Forty Martyrs of Sebaste
The Forty Martyrs of Sebaste or the Holy Forty (Ancient/Katharevousa Greek ''Ἅγιοι Τεσσεράκοντα''; Demotic: ''Άγιοι Σαράντα'') were a group of Roman soldiers in the Legio XII ''Fulminata'' (Armed with Lightning) w ...
.Michael David Coogan, ''A Brief Introduction to the Old Testament: The Hebrew Bible in Its Context'', Oxford, 2008, p. 116 This usage is sometimes found in English as well (for example, "
forty winks
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Words with the suffix ''-illion'' (e.g. zillion, gazillion, bazillion, jillion, bajillion, squillion, and others) are often used as informal names for unspecified large numbers by analogy to
names of large numbers
Two naming scales for large numbers have been used in English and other European languages since the early modern era: the long and short scales. Most English variants use the short scale today, but the long scale remains dominant in many non-E ...
billion
Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions:
*1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is its only current meaning in English.
* 1,000,000,000,000, i. ...
'' (109) and ''
trillion
''Trillion'' is a number with two distinct definitions:
* 1,000,000,000,000, i.e. one million million, or (ten to the twelfth power), as defined on the short scale. This is now the meaning in both American and British English.
* 1,000,000,000,0 ...
'' (1012). In Estonian, the compound word ''mustmiljon'' ("black million") is used to mean an unfathomably large number.
These words are intended to denote a number that is large enough to be unfathomable and are typically used as
hyperbole
Hyperbole (; adj. hyperbolic ) is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. In rhetoric, it is also sometimes known as auxesis (literally 'growth'). In poetry and oratory, it emphasizes, evokes strong feelings, and ...
or for comic effect. They have no precise value or order. They form ordinals and
fractions
A fraction (from la, fractus, "broken") represents a part of a whole or, more generally, any number of equal parts. When spoken in everyday English, a fraction describes how many parts of a certain size there are, for example, one-half, eight ...
with the usual suffix ''-th'', e.g. "I asked her for the jillionth time", or "-illionaire" to describe a wealthy person.
Other
A " sagan" or "sagan unit" is a facetious name for a very large number, at least four billion, inspired by Carl Sagan's association with the phrase "
billions and billions
''Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium'' is a 1997 book by the American astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan. The last book written by Sagan before his death in 1996, it was published by Rando ...
".Sagan at dictionary.reference.com (definition from the Jargon File) It is not to be confused with Sagan's number, the number of stars in the
observable universe
The observable universe is a ball-shaped region of the universe comprising all matter that can be observed from Earth or its space-based telescopes and exploratory probes at the present time, because the electromagnetic radiation from these ob ...
.
See also
*
List of unusual units of measurement
An unusual unit of measurement is a unit of measurement that does not form part of a coherent system of measurement, especially because its exact quantity may not be well known or because it may be an inconvenient multiple or fraction of a base ...
*
List of humorous units of measurement
Many people have made use of, or invented, units of measurement intended primarily for their humor
Humour (Commonwealth English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The ...
*
Large numbers
Large numbers are numbers significantly larger than those typically used in everyday life (for instance in simple counting or in monetary transactions), appearing frequently in fields such as mathematics, cosmology, cryptography, and statistical m ...
*
Names of large numbers
Two naming scales for large numbers have been used in English and other European languages since the early modern era: the long and short scales. Most English variants use the short scale today, but the long scale remains dominant in many non-E ...