This article lists and discusses the usage and derivation of names of large numbers, together with their possible extensions.
The following table lists those names of large numbers which are found in many English dictionaries and thus have a special claim to being "real words". The "Traditional British" values shown are unused in American English and are becoming rare in British English, but their other language variants are dominant in many non-English-speaking areas, including continental Europe and Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America; see Long and short scales.
English also has many words, such as "zillion", used informally to mean large but unspecified amounts; see indefinite and fictitious numbers.
Read more about Names Of Large Numbers: Standard Dictionary Numbers, Usage of Names of Large Numbers, Origins of The "standard Dictionary Numbers", An aide-memoire, The Googol Family, Extensions of The Standard Dictionary Numbers, Proposals For New Naming System, Other Large Numbers Used in Mathematics and Physics
Famous quotes containing the words names, large and/or numbers:
“If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will—the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“And DANTE searched the triple spheres,
Moulding nature at his will,
So shaped, so colored, swift or still,
And, sculptor-like, his large design
Etched on Alp and Apennine.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)