Indefinite And Fictitious Large Numbers
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. One technical term for such words is "non-numerical vague quantifier".
Read more about Indefinite And Fictitious Large Numbers: General Placeholder Names, Umpteen, -illion, Well-defined Numbers That Are Not Precisely Known
Famous quotes containing the words indefinite, fictitious, large and/or numbers:
“Freedom is but the possibility of a various and indefinite activity; while government, or the exercise of dominion, is a single, yet real activity. The longing for freedom, therefore, is at first only too frequently suggested by the deep-felt consciousness of its absence.”
—Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835)
“It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honour, and fictitious benevolence.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“... nothing seems completely to differentiate the poor but poverty. We find no adjectives to fit them, as a whole, only those of which Want is the mother. “Miserable” covers many; “shabby” most, and I am sadly aware that, in a large majority of minds, “disagreeable” includes them all.”
—Albion Fellows Bacon (1865–1933)
“And when all bodies meet
In Lethe to be drowned,
Then only numbers sweet
With endless life are crowned.”
—Robert Herrick (1591–1674)