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:
“The ideology of capitalism makes us all into connoisseurs of liberty—of the indefinite expansion of possibility.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“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)
“All those large dreams by which men long live well
Are magic-lanterned on the smoke of hell;”
—William Empson (1906–1984)
“The land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.”
—Bible: Hebrew Numbers 35:33.