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Indefinite and fictitious numbers

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"Zillion" redirects here. For other uses, see Zillion (disambiguation).

The English language has a number of words for indefinite and fictitious numbers - inexact terms of indefinite size, used for comic effect, for exaggeration, or when precision is unnecessary or undesirable.

Umpteen

Umpteen is a term for an unspecified but reasonably large number, used in a humorous fashion or to imply that it is not worth the effort to pin down the actual figure. Despite the -teen ending, which would seem to indicate that it lies between 12 and 20, umpteen can be used in ways implying it is much larger than that—if it ever could be pinned down.

The word is apparently derived from the slang ump(ty), a dash in Morse code (of imitative origin), plus -teen. [1] A derived term using the same root is umpty-ump.

Zillion

Imaginary words ending in the sound "-illion", such as zillion[1] and bazillion[2], are often used as fictitious names for an unspecified, large number, by analogy to names of large numbers such as billion and trillion. Their size is dependent upon the context, but can typically be considered large enough to be unfathomable by the average human mind.

These terms are often used as hyperbole or for comic effect, or in loose, unconfined conversation to present an un-guessably large number. Since these are undefined, they have no mathematical validity and no accepted order, since none is necessarily larger or smaller than any of the others.

Many similar words are used, such as ananillion,[3] bajillion,[4] squillion,[1] skillion,[5] gonillion,[6] kabillion,[7] kajillion,[8] gajillion,[9] umptillion,[10] gagillion,[11] gadzillion,[12] gazillion, which is in the standard dictionary included with Microsoft Word word-processing software, godzillion,[13] hojillion,[14] grillion,[15] julillion,[16] and robillion.[17]

These words can be transformed into ordinal numbers or fractions by the usual pattern of appending the suffix -th, e.g., "I asked her for the zillionth time."

  • In the third Austin Powers movie, Dr. Evil asks for "One billion, gajillion, fafillion...yen" to stop his tractor beam.
  • Musician Stevie Wonder's song "Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away".[18]
  • A joke focuses on a world leader being told that a multi-national military force had suffered several Brazilian (i.e., "brazillion") casualties. The leader is very disconcerted over such a huge loss of life — Presidential Briefing rec.humor.funny
  • In the novel Life, the Universe and Everything, "two grillion" was used to describe the number of casualties in the two-thousand-year war against the Krikkiters. This number, apparently, is "a whole lotta stiffs". [19]
  • In the second episode of the televised version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the word quilliard was used by Ford Prefect to describe the cost of the Heart of Gold, which was five quilliard Altairian dollars. A quilliard is equal to "a whole page full of naughts with a one at the beginning".
  • In the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip originally published in newspapers on January 18, 1995 (reprinted in There's Treasure Everywhere on page 138), Calvin asks Susie what 7 + 6 is. Susie tells him three hundred billion gazillion. She says that is a three followed by 85 zeroes. Calvin writes it down, saying he knew that.
  • In the animated cartoon Codename: Kids Next Door, the phrase 'Eleventy Billion' is used often, along with other words like 'buhmillion' and 'kajillion'.
  • 'Eleventy Billion' also appeared on a Saturday Night Live Celebrity Jeopardy skit as a wager from Keanu Reeves.
  • A tongue-in-cheek Washington Post newspaper column by Joel Achenbach that ran March 8, 2007 about the U.S. federal deficit opens: "As you may have heard, the latest White House proposal for the federal budget amounts to a bazillion gazillion dollars, give or take a jillion." [20]
  • In the comic strip Dilbert, Dilbert's company lost so much money that no word existed to describe it. Marketing went to work and coined the word 'frooglepoopillion'.
  • When Steve Jobs uses it many times in the Wallstreet Journal's "D: All things Digital" conference (May 30, 2007).
  • Richie Rich Zillionz was a title of a Richie Rich franchise comic book series by Harvey Publications in 1977.[21]
  • The website Kabillion

References

  1. ^ a b Pratchett, Terry (2002). Witches Abroad. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-102061-3. p. 146: "And you owe me a million billion trillion zillion squillion dollars."
  2. ^ Harrison, Colin (2001). Afterburn. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-97870-7. p. 278: "I wouldn't sleep with him in a bazillion years, but I'm not scared of him."
  3. ^ Williams, Michael A. (1994). Fruit on the Crow's Mind. The Times. ISBN 0-368-55763-0. p. 148: "I hate swimming an ananillion times more than I hate bananas."
  4. ^ Bates, Karen G. (2005). Plain Brown Wrapper. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-380-80891-9. p. 86: "Well, yes, it was, and the rumor that there were seventy bajillion women to every man just wouldn't die..."
  5. ^ Kean, Rob (2000). The Pledge. Warner Books. ISBN 0-446-60848-3. p. 429: "Sure enough, I found a skillion articles from about a dozen years ago, accounts of the events and aftermath of Cherry Plain."
  6. ^ Goldberg, Steve (1986). Truth and Love. Random House. ISBN 0-380-80632-0. p. 302: "The curtains had a gonillion dust particles on them, like grandmother's dentures."
  7. ^ Hodgman, Ann (1999). Beat That!. Houghton Mifflin Cookbooks. ISBN 0-395-97178-0. p. 115: "That's about all I remember, except for this salad and the ninety kabillion manicotti someone else brought."
  8. ^ Steven Schragis and Rick Frishman (2006). 10 Clowns Don't Make a Circus. Adams Media. ISBN 1-59337-555-7. p. 122: "You are not going to sell a kajillion of anything just because it's the coolest little gizmo you ever saw or because your Uncle Ernie said you would."
  9. ^ Southworth, Samuel A. (2004). U.S. Armed Forces Arsenal: A Guide to Modern Combat Hardware. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-81318-1. p. 98: "The expectation was that the Soviets would roll a gajillion of their ever-improving but still basic tanks across the landscape..."
  10. ^ Anthony, Piers (2002). How Precious Was That While. Tor/Forge. ISBN 0-8125-7543-1. p. 121: "Your best place, geographically, to bridge across the river is surrounded by Hell's Bells Bog, so deep it would take fifteen umptillion tons of special fill to stabilize it, putting you over your budget."
  11. ^ Lawrence, Martha C. (1996). Murder in Scorpio. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-95984-2. p. 114: "The brochures basically told the same story Stan had given me: Pacific Properties owned a gagillion places that generated a gagillion dollars."
  12. ^ Cooke, Kaz (2003). Bun in the Oven. Ten Speed Press. ISBN 1-58008-531-8. p. 3: "...and then the editor asked a gadzillion questions..."
  13. ^ Franzen, Jonathan (2001). Strong Motion. Picador. ISBN 0-312-42051-X. p. 395: "She believes there's a zillion gallons of oil and a godzillion cubic meters of natural gas inside the earth, beginning at a depth of about four miles, and no anvil-headed senior research chemist with a crew cut and stinky breath is going to tell her it isn't so."
  14. ^ http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Defective_skull
  15. ^ Kelley, Brent (2001). The Pastime in Turbulence: Interviews with Baseball Players of the 1940s. McFarland and Company. ISBN 0-7864-0975-4. p. 8: "After that, even expansion and grillion-dollar salaries could not harm it."
  16. ^ Himmelstein, Sandra (1997). The Lampost Next Door. Picador. ISBN 0-678-73773-2. p. 67 "Make a wish, on any one of the julillion stars."
  17. ^ Hanneman, George (1988). The Creeping Game. The Times. ISBN 0-233-83992-X. p. 19 "It was the robillionth time they had done it, but it was as fun as ever before."
  18. ^ Stevie Wonder, Fulfillingness' First Finale, 1974, Motown/Tamla T6332S1; remastered reprint, 2000, Universal/Motown 012 157 356-2.
  19. ^ Adams, Douglas (2005, reprint ed). Life, the Universe, and Everything. Del Rey. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link) (orig. pub. London: Pan Books, 1982.) ISBN 0-345-41890-5. p. 101.
  20. ^ Washington Post Article
  21. ^ Washington University in St. Louis reference

See also

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