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 of, names, large and/or numbers:
“In a time of confusion and rapid change like the present, when terms are continually turning inside out and the names of things hardly keep their meaning from day to day, it’s not possible to write two honest paragraphs without stopping to take crossbearings on every one of the abstractions that were so well ranged in ornate marble niches in the minds of our fathers.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Almanacked, their names live; they
Have slipped their names, and stand at ease,
Or gallop for what must be joy,”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1985)
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“One murder makes a villain, millions a hero. Numbers sanctify, my good fellow.”
—Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977)