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It took him eleventeen days to count it.
Fry: One. Jillion. Dollars.
[audience gasps]
Auctioneer: Sir, that's not a number.
[audience gasps harder]

When your notation isn't enough, it's better to make up new numbers on the spot.

Has two popular varieties:

  • Using zillions, skyrillions and other such words as real (but ridiculously high) numbers. Often lampshaded.
  • Just making up numbers when their correct meaning may be guessed: for example, "eleventy" must be 110.

Of course, there are plenty of real large numbers ending in -illion, usually formed with boring Latin prefixes - The Other Wiki, as always, has a list. Most are just non identifiable by the layman.

Ridiculous Future Inflation can be a cause of this. Usually a Comedy Trope. Justified when a character really uses another notation, or when he has to make a number up because what he's describing is even bigger than a googolplex.note  For money, compare Zillion-Dollar Bill and contrast Undisclosed Funds. For units of measurement, compare Fantastic Measurement System.

This trope is not called imaginary numbers, because mathematics already has those as a concept. Those are far more useful, especially when computing the square root of a negative number, and are basically the mathematical foundation of quantum mechanics, electronics, telecommunications and signal processing.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Comic Books 

    Commercials 
  • "Did you know women prefer Old Spice for their men one bajillion times more than ladies' scented body washes? Did you know that I'm riding this horse backwards? Hyah!"
  • There's an ING commercial where one man is carrying around a sign that reads 1.2 million dollars, which is the amount that he knows he needs to have to live comfortably in retirement. His next-door neighbor has a sign that says "A Gazillion" to illustrate that he doesn't know what he requires for retirement and thus needs the company's services.

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animated 
  • Hercules:
    Hades: Uh, yeah, Poseidon, about a zillion times...
  • At the beginning of Toy Story, the wanted poster of Mr. Potato Head shows the "$50 bzillion" [sic] reward. Of course, the drawing was done by a six-year-old boy.
  • The LEGO Movie: Captain Metalbeard describes Lord Business's office as being on the "infinityth floor" of the Octan Tower.
  • In Turning Red, Priya says that "tickets to 4*Town are, like, a bajillion dollars".

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Duplex
    Nancy Kendricks: Well it's going to be worth a bazillion times that.
  • Who Framed Roger Rabbit
    Eddie Valiant: We were investigating a robbery at the First National Bank of Toontown. [snip] Anyway, this guy got away with a zillion simoleons.
  • Undercover Brother
    The Chief: Didn't you cause about a ba-zillion dollars worth of damage?
  • Starship Troopers (also used in the book).
    Trooper: Bugs, Mr. Rico! Zillions of 'em!
  • Back to the Future: To modern ears, the movie's famous "1.21 jiggawatts" sounds like this, but it's really just an outdated pronunciation of "gigawatts".
  • Austin Powers in Goldmember: Continuing the series-wide Running Gag of Dr. Evil not understanding inflation, he holds the world hostage for "1 billion, gagillion, fafillion, shabolubalu million illion yillion...yen". The U.N. deems it a reasonable price.

    Jokes 
  • Donald Rumsfeld briefed the President this morning. He told Bush that three Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq. To everyone's amazement, all of the colour ran from Bush's face, then he collapsed onto his desk, head in hands, visibly shaken, almost whimpering. Finally, he composed himself and asked Rumsfeld, "Just exactly how many is a brazillion?"
  • During the preparation to the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games, due to the enormous amount of funds spent (a lot of them stolen as befits Russian tradition), "Olympiard" became memetic. The exact amount is still debated, but a common joke was that it equals a thousand spizdillions (spizdili is an obscene Russian word for [they] have stolen).

    Literature 
  • In Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction, Adrian tries to convince his accountant that his substantial debt isn't a big deal by pointing out that there are "7 zillion trillion stars" in the sky and writing out the number in full, which he writes as a 7 followed by 21 zeros. This would give a zillion the value of a billion if Adrian is using the short scale, or a thousand if he is using the long scale.
  • Not for a Billion Gazillion Dollars by Paula Danzinger.
  • From The Lord of the Rings: Bilbo proclaims, "Today is my 111st birthday: I am eleventy-one today!"note  The term is apparently normal for hobbits, who live longer than humans. It's derived from Old English: hund endleofantig).
  • In Life, the Universe and Everything, the Krikkit Wars apparently resulted in two grillion casualties.
  • Discworld
    "Bet you a million trillion zillion dollars you can't turn that bush into a pumpkin," said the child.
    ...
    "Nothing. Just thinking. And you owe me a million trillion zillion squillion dollars."
    • A variation in The Science of Discworld, in which imaginary numbers are parodied with the Bursar suggesting that there's an extra number between three and four called 'umpt'. A Stealth Pun about 'umpteen', umpt presumably being that minus ten.
  • Dave Barry once proposed that Congress should use the "Whomptillion", defined as "an amount of money so huge that every time a Congressman says the word, your taxes go up 5%".
  • Ramona Quimby:
    • In the last book, Ramona turns ten, but refers to herself as "zeroteen" because she thinks the way the first three double-digit numbers get left out of the "teens" is arbitrary and unfair.
    • In Beezus and Ramona, when she's five, she weighs herself and comes up with "fifty-eleven pounds".
  • In Dave Barry Slept Here, France's sale notice for the Louisiana territory describes its size as "approx. 34 hillion jillion acres".
  • The novel Blasphemy by Richard Preston mentions God Numbers and reveals one of them that is used to represent the "fullness of time" that will be needed for the universe to reach its "final state".
    It will be a number of years equal to ten factorial raised to the ten factorial power, that number raised to the ten factorial power, that number raised to the ten factorial power, this power relation repeated 10^83 times, and then the resulting number raised to its own factorial power 10^47 times, as above.note 
  • Isaac Asimov's "Catch That Rabbit": When Powell is emphasizing how many parts of DV-5 could be responsible for the conflict in this story, he says there's "upty-ump thousand other individual pieces of complexity that can be wrong."
  • At one point in Crazy Rich Asians, Micheal uses the number gazillion:
    "I can't watch these people spend a gazillion dollars on a wedding when half the world is starving."

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Cosby Show:
    • "It's All in the Game"
    Cliff Huxtable: Do you know just how much it's going to cost to fix the washing machine? A bazillion dollars.
    • "Denise Kendall: Navy Wife"
    Cliff Huxtable: There is a zillion skillion babies in Heaven.
  • Saturday Night Live:
    Alex Trebek: [to Keanu] Let's see what you wagered: Eleventy billion dollars. That's not even a real number.
    Keanu Reeves: Yet.
    • In another episode, Alex threw out the final category and told the contestants to write down any number at all in order to win. Jimmy Fallon's French Stewart went with "threeve" and then wagered "$Texas."
  • Tubbs, the Cloud Cuckoo Lander shop owner of The League of Gentlemen counts everything as “twelvty”. Her husband Edward does not appear to notice.
  • Parodied in That Mitchell and Webb Look, in a Numberwang sketch where an "Imaginary Numbers" round is played. While "Twentington" and "Frilve hundred and Neeb" are accepted, "Shinty-six" (depicted as fifty-six with a reversed five) is rejected as being a real number ("As in the popular phrase, 'I only have shinty-six days left to live.'"). A sketch during their live tour (also adapted into a Celebrity Edition for the BBC's Comic Relief telethon) had a "no numbers" round which similarly rejected "Brazil" as being a number, as in "Brazil Britons are feared to be among the dead."
  • Timmy Mallet's children's breakfast show from The '80s, Wacaday, popularised "squillion". This recently re-emerged when Nick Clegg used it in one of the British prime ministerial debates.
  • In the episode "Culture for the Masses" in The Goodies, Tim buys a painting at an auction for "one million billion quintillion zillion pounds and two and a half new pence", which it goes without saying that he does not have. They leave thirteen pence as a deposit. By Contrived Coincidence, the National Gallery has all their paintings insured for exactly one million billion quintillion zillion pounds. Hilarity Ensues.
  • The TV Series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981) extends a line of dialogue from the book and puts in a new number:
    Ford Prefect: I think this ship is brand-new, Arthur.
    Arthur Dent: Why, have you got some exotic device for measuring the age of metal?
    Ford Prefect: No. I just found this sales brochure on the floor. It says, "The Universe can be yours for a mere five quilliard Altairian dollars."
    Arthur Dent: Cheap?
    Ford Prefect: A quilliard is a whole page full of noughts [zeros] with a one at the beginning.
  • Mr. Show featured a sketch set in the 1890s which revolved around a marching band competition judged by the "Eleventy-Twelfth President of the United States".
  • There was a series of sketches on MADtv (1995) parodying Schoolhouse Rock! and one of the songs parodied was "Three is a Magic Number." The lyrics went like:
    3, 6, 9
    12, 47, 90
    Something, next, 100
    3 times 10 is -2
    3 times 5 is elevendy
    3 times 2 is I dunno
  • How I Met Your Mother: "I would bet you a gazillion dollars — no, I'm even more confident — I would bet you a floppity-jillion dollars."
  • Babylon 5: "Eleventy" is used in one episode, with Lennier mentioning his "eleventy-fifth year" of religious caste training. According to JMS, this is actually an aversion, and "eleventy-fifth" is "sixteenth" as expressed in Minbari base-eleven style (though poor Londo looked as bored as if he had been listening to 115 years' worth of anecdotes).
  • Silicon Valley: Elrich Bachman, trying to prove he understands binary: "Jesus Christ, I memorized the hexadecimal times tables when I was fourteen writing machine code. Okay? Ask me what nine times F is. It’s fleventy-five." (In fact, 9*F in hexadecimal is 87 hex).
  • Odd Squad: Glenn, who owns a new cupcake shop in town, boasts about having "one million billion trillion" flavors. One would think that he's just exaggerating, but then Olive and Otto visit the Mathroom, where Olive brings up what he said...and what ensues is every single paper fortune unfolding to reveal a single one and many, many zeroes.
    Otto: That's...a lot...of zeroes.

    Music 
  • Jay-Z's "Allure":
    "The game is a light bulb with eleventy-million volts"
  • Usher's "Burn" has this:
    "It's been fifty-eleven days, umpteen hours,
    I'm gonna be burnin' 'til you return!"
  • The John Denver song "Grandma's Feather Bed" says the bed "was made from the feathers of forty 'leven geese."

    Newspaper Comics 
  • Calvin and Hobbes:
    • On a math test, Calvin asks Susie for an answer, and she responds "three hundred billion gazillion." This is then lampshaded, as Calvin proceeds to snark her for giving such a "helpful" answer. Susie then follows up by saying that it's a 3, followed by 85 zeroes, and Calvin writes it down.
    • Spaceman Spiff also tends to use these kinds of "-illion" numbers.
    • When Calvin asks Hobbes for help with his math homework, Hobbes notes that it requires calculus and imaginary numbers, "You know, eleventeen, thirty-twelve, and all those." (Imaginary numbers, by the way, are a real mathematical concept, but not the way Hobbes puts it.)
  • Dilbert: The marketing team coined "frooglepoopillion" to describe how much money the company lost, and it shows up in a few later strips. In another strip, the company initially gave its earnings as "a few frillion".
  • Big Nate: An answer Francis gave to Nate (33 jillion) as a response to a math question he clearly hadn't yet answered, which he mindlessly agreed to and said he got the exact same thing.

    Pinball 

    Radio 
  • Dead Ringers:
    • Rio Ferdinand's thing is giving bizarrely high statistical probabilities. If Gary Lineker is lucky, those are real numbers, but sometimes Rio will come out with eleventy trillion.
    • Priti Patel seems incapable of using real numbers in any circumstances.

    Theatre 
  • In "The Rain Song" from 110 in the Shade, Starbuck boasts that he knows "forty-'leven different methods" for bringing rain.

    Video Games 
  • The Eleventy Billionth HoKage insists that "eleventy" means "eleven more than everything"
  • Borderlands
    • One selling point of was Borderlands its "87 bazillion" guns. The actual number of weapon combinations is quite high but doesn't even come close to the "billion" moniker.
    • Borderlands 2: As the sales pitch says, "87 bazillion guns" just got BAZILLIONDIER.
  • EarthBound (1994): In the Japanese version, Porky's dad claims Ness' family owes him an unrealistic value, something equivalent to "hundred million jillion dollars". In the US version, it was changed to a realistic value of hundred thousand dollars or more. Later in the game, Ness and company acquire a diamond said to be worth a similarly unrealistic value, but the translation made it worth an even one million.
  • When Strong Bad, and Tycho argue over whose website gets more hits per month in Poker Night at the Inventory, Strong Bad argues that Tycho's gets about a few blajillion. On Monday, several katillion hits. On Tuesday, half a blazill-illion.
  • According to NGU IDLE, one thousand centillion (or CENTILLION, since the game writes it in capitals) is a SUPERCENTILLION (also capitals).
  • In Psychonauts 2, the goal of the second level is to make it into the high rollers' lounge, which is apparently exclusive to gazillionares, then double-gazillionares and finally triple-gazillionares. Thankfully, this is a Journey to the Center of the Mind, so it's doable with some problem-solving.

    Web Animation 
  • Homestar Runner:
    • In the Strong Bad Email "car", Strong Bad ponders getting "two jillion emails every two jillion seconds", to which Strong Sad tells him that a jillion isn't a real number.
    • The 4Tst Annual Fall Float Parade, pronounced "firty-tirst".

    Webcomics 
  • In Homestuck, the Warhammer of Zillyhoo costs one zillion units of Zillium grist to alchemize. In Act 6 it's confirmed that the Warhammer and the other Zilly-weapons (plus Dirk's Unbreakable Katana) actually do cost one zillion Zillium each. Of course, all this alchemization takes place during Trickster Mode, so who knows whether that number really means anything.
  • This Penny Arcade strip satirizes the idea Scott McCloud proposed in Reinventing Comics: if there were some kind of online financial infrastructure that could process transactions as small as a few US cents, webcomics could monetize their content by charging readers a few cents per page view.
    Now lets's take a comic like Sandwich Shoppe — divide their forty thousand readers in half, and multiply that by sweet, bee-fresh honey. That's a hojillion dollars! Now, subtract three vanilla wafers to pay the Billy Goats Gruff, and you've got a hundred kabillion million dollars!

    Web Original 
  • Insanity Prawn Boy likes to use the number "fifty-twelve". Incidentally, he lives in apartment 512.
  • According to the first episode of Ouran: The Vaguely Abridged Series, Haruhi Fujioka needs "eight million jillion quadrillion malalalalilion shoo-ba-da-da-do-bop-bop-ian" in order to pay off a broken vase. Also note that value doesn't have a currency attached to it.
  • From That Wacky Century:
    1918 – Britain and France blame World War I on Germany, and require them to pay a hillion jillion Deutschmarks in reparations; Germany accomplishes this by printing a hillion 1-jillion-Deutschmark bills.
  • Gröûp X can count all the way to scfifty-five.
  • Zero Punctuation features wonderful numbers like the Bazillion or the Hyperbolillion.
  • According to history of the entire world, i guess, the universe was "about a kjghpillion degrees" shortly after the Big Bang.
  • An online parody of real estate shows is called Bajillion Dollar Propertie$.
  • In Epithet Erased, Giovanni gets trapped in a prison made by Indus. To get out, Giovanni tells him about his "ten-hundred" minions, and in exchange, asks Indus to let them out. This works.

    Western Animation 
  • ALVINNN!!! and the Chipmunks: We get one of these from a hypnotised Simon. during a quiz.
    Simon: Uh, eleventeen!
    Host: No, eleventeen is not actually a number.
  • The Fairly OddParents!: Norm the Genie tries to get Timmy to order a million billion jillion dollars. Timmy says he knows there's no such number as a jillion, and wishes for the billion. He never said they would be real.
  • In Frosty the Snowman, forgiveness for what Professor Hinkle did comes with a rather stiff price:
    Santa Claus: Now you go home and write "I am very sorry for what I did to Frosty" 100 zillion times.
  • Oscar's Orchestra is set "735 squillion" (plus a few million) years in the future, according to the first episode's opening narration.
  • The Animaniacs episode "Flipper Parody/Temporary Insanity/Operation: Lollipop/What Are We?" has a check for 80 zillion dollars.
  • In the Batman Beyond episode "The Winning Edge":
    Batman: Come on, he must be a zillion years old.
  • Family Guy:
    Senator 1: I say we fine the El Dorado Tobacco Company infinty billion dollars!
    Senator 2: That's the spirit! But I think a real number might be more effective.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door:
    • In an operation at an ice cream factory, Numbuh Three finally finds a thermostat and promptly cranks it to the "Like, eleventy-billion degrees!" setting.
    • There's a villain who always says he wants a buh-million dollars (denoted as $BUH.000.000).
    • In fact, the number "eleventy-billon" is thrown around quite frequently, presumably meaning 110×109, or 110,000,000,000. Even Father says it in Operation: Z.E.R.O..
  • In The Penguins of Madagascar, when Kowalski is asked about a number that's less than nothing, he comes up with "neg-finity".
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • Doug:
    • In one episode, Doug is imagining an utterly one-sided baseball game. After Doug strikes out again and Patty asks Skeeter for the score, Skeeter replies, "A bajillion to nothing."
    • Another episode titled "Doug's Mail Order Mania" featured a sweepstakes with prize money of a zillion, or so high, the number literally does on for pages. Specifically, it shows one followed by 1,722 zeroes. It turns out to be fradulent.
  • In Futurama episode "A Fishful of Dollars", Fry is bidding against Mom for the last can of anchovies on Earth and tries to bid one jillion dollars. He settles for 50 million instead.
  • Garfield and Friends: In U.S. Acres, Roy once won "one skillion dollars" while competing on a game show.
  • In an episode of Jimmy Two-Shoes, when asked by Lucius how many times Beezy has saved his life, Beezy says "Twe-leven!"
  • In the Kim Possible episode "The Big Job", Señor Senior Junior presents his ransom demands:
    Señor Senior Junior: Hello, everyone. If you are interested in having the five richest people in the world safely returned to you, you need to convey to us the sum of a bazillion zillion dollars. [laughs]
    Shego: [offscreen] That's not a real number.
    Señor Senior Junior: But it sounds so impressive! And don't you like my evil chortle?
    Shego: [pushing SSJ aside] Hi, he's new at this. A billion dollars apiece will do just fine.
  • The Duck Dodgers episode "The Six Wazillion Dollar Duck" lampshades this completely.
    Dr. IQ High: Those mechanic parts aren't toys. They cost six wazillion dollars.
    Dodgers: Is that a lot?
    Dr. IQ High: It's so much money that we actually had to make up a number and multiply it by six just to count it.
  • The Jem episode "Broadway Magic" has Eric Raymond offering the real amount of one million dollars to anyone who can reveal Jem's secret identity. A man from a fake sweepstakes company approaches Jem with a check for one zillion dollars and says that the money is hers if she signs her real name.
  • From The Simpsons episode "Milhouse of Sand and Fog":
    Bart: Mom, Dad, I'd give a kajillion dollars for you two to get back together.
    Homer: Make it 2 kajillion.
    Marge: Homer!
    Homer: We'll lose the first kajillion to taxes.
  • Gravity Falls
    • In "The Inconveniencing", after Mabel starts hallucinating from eating too much Smile Dip:
      Dipper: Mabel, how many of these did you eat?!
      Mabel: Bleven-teen...
    • In "The Time Traveler's Pig", Blendin Blandin is a time agent from the year 207̃012 (pronounced "twenty-snyeventy-twelve").
  • The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: In the episode "Normal Boy", Jimmy becomes dimwitted, and during school, he answers a math problem ("What's the square root of 144?") with "eleventy-six".
  • A couple of examples from Arthur: in the episode "Arthur Babysits," he flashes back to D.W. jumping on the couch as Arthur attempts to read to her. She chants "Forty-eleven, forty-twelve, forty-thirteen..." while doing so.note  Additionally, in the episode "I'd Rather Read It Myself," the Tibble Twins tried to prove to D.W. they could tell time. They pointed to the grandfather clock in Arthur's living room and said the time was "eleventy-twelve," when the clock actually read ten past four.
  • Metalocalypse does this quite often, mainly because each member of Dethklok is, at the very least, a multi-billionaire and each album the Band releases dramatically affects the Stock Market and Global Economy.
    News Anchor: World markets rose sharply again on the shipping of the Dethklok album, which is expected to give a huge boost to the economy. As a result, the U.S. Treasury issued a new denomination of currency; the Klokillion. That's one million krillions, folks!
  • In the Adventure Time episode "Five More Short Graybles", the storyteller informs the viewer that the theme of the episode can't be the five fingers because nobody's had five fingers for over "20 mabillion glables".
  • The Venture Brothers: In the episode "Assisted Suicide", Eros and Thanatos argue over whether "quadrillion" is a real number. (It is. 1015 in short scale, or 1024 in long scale.)
  • The Ren & Stimpy Show: In the episode "Terminal Stimpy", Stimpy attempts to count how many of his nine lives he has lost. Being Stimpy, he answers with "sixty-twelve" (while holding up three fingers), to which Ren corrects him that it's seven.
  • Heathcliff & the Catillac Cats: Cleo asks if Hector, Wordsworth and Mungo can count. Mungo rattles off "eleventeen".
  • The DuckTales (1987) episode "Liquid Assets" has Fenton say that Scrooge had 607 tillion 386 zillion 947 trillion 522 billion dollars and 36 cents, keeping in tune with him in the comics.
  • Given the age range of the Rugrats cast, this is bound to show up. For example, when the babies hear about Didi planting dill herbs and think there's going to be clones of Dil...
    Tommy: I love my brother, but I don't know if I can deal with two, or three, or... eleventy!
  • Star vs. the Forces of Evil: In order to re-open the Bounce Lounge in the titular episode, the gang must raise a bagillion dollars. Marco even lampshades it, saying that he doesn't think that that's a real number.
  • Wander over Yonder: In "The Epic Quest of Unfathomable Difficulty!!!", Wander and Sylvia have to reach the top of the Intergalactic Guru's temple by climbing its "million-quinquog-inter-quadra-tentillion steps."

    Other 
  • In a meme that was spawned by the film Morbius, some people state the movie made so much money, a new number named after Morbius had to be invented called Morbillion.

    Real Life 
  • The technical name for a googol, if you were to extrapolate from the usual naming convention, would be "ten duotrigintillion", or "ten thousand sexdecillion"/"ten sexdecilliard" on the long scale (where a billion equals one million millions), or we could just say 10^100 and call it a day. Hilariously, the term was supposedly coined by mathematician Edward Kasner's young nephew upon being asked for a large number.
  • Truth in Television: Graham's number is so ridiculously huge that we have to use another notation to write it. If we were to use the normal notation, we'd need a new universe to write it, as this one is entirely too small. For a time it was the largest number ever used seriously in a mathematical proof, though it's since lost this title to other numbers. It is so ridiculously huge that the amount of information required to write it down completely in your head is enough to literally collapse your head into a black hole. This video gives an idea of how huge it is.
  • In typical Wiki fashion, Googology Wiki is devoted to studying and naming such numbers. Graham's number is on the low end of the numbers listed there; most are so large that they have absolutely no mathematical use. As a result, they can be more laid-back with their naming schemes than "formal" numbers — such as, for instance, Monster-Giant — but the one main requirement is that they do have to be a finite number with a definite value that can be calculated. (Even if you'd need a calculator with either tailor-made custom notation or a screen larger than the observable universe to do so.) As such, classic ones like "zillion" and "jillion", along with anything involving infinity or transfinite values, are barred.
  • There is an entire thread on the XKCD forums dedicated to creating ever larger and larger numbers. After about 5 pages of this, the numbers being thrown around make Graham's Number seem like a speck of dust in comparison. After another 10 pages... let's just say that the numbers are so large that the math to understand these numbers gets progressively harder and harder to understand. Probably set in motion by this comic. The Ackermann Function tends to return huge values for even the smallest numbers (The Other Wiki says A(4,3) has 6.031*10^19727 digits). Now imagine Graham's number as the input. "AUGHHH" indeed. Although, this number is still provably less than g65, so it's really not actually a huge improvement...
  • The S.I. prefixes for large numbers go "tera" (trillion), "peta" (quadrillion), "exa" (quintillion), "zetta" (sextillion), and "yotta" (septillion). In 2022, the prefixes "ronna" and "quetta" were officially adopted for 10^27 (octillion) and 10^30 (nonillion). You could, theoretically, string multiple prefixes together, so a megaquetta would be one million quetta. The length of a football field, expressed in the super tiny unit called the Planck length, would be a little over 5 megaquettaPlanck lengths.
  • Numbers in French.
    • The same principle as "twelve" ("douze") is continued up to 16 ("seize").
    • The direct translations of "seventy", "eighty" and "ninety" ("septante", "octante" and "nonante") are archaic in France and Quebec but do have some rare use in other regions. The more standard terms are "sixty-ten", "four-twenty" and "four-twenty-ten" ("soixante-dix", "quatre-vingts" and "quatre-vingt-dix"). "Quatre-vingts" is comparable to "four score" in English, "score" being equal to 20.
  • In English, number names are generally standardized with the larger place value being the prefix and the smaller one being the suffix (i.e. "55" being "fifty" and "five"). Except numbers 11-19, which flip the pattern and have a couple that don't fit at all. A common linguistical error for young children learning to speak English and count at the same time is to over-generalize the pattern; rather than switching from "nineteen" to "twenty," they'll simply continue to count on, ending up with numbers like "ten-teen" and "eleven-teen" for 20 and 21.
  • When you get right down to it, since numbers go on forever, all that's necessary is to somehow give those numbers an official name. But until then, numbers like 'zillion' or 'gluglomwomalomadumdummillion' will stay non-existent unless they are given a definition as a specific number.
  • The real numbers using the "-illion" suffix themselves qualified at one point. "Million" comes from the Italian Millione, which is the superlative suffix -one applied to mille (thousand), giving it a literal meaning of "super thousand". As such, other words ending in "-illion" were not attaching to an existing root word (at the time), but were Portmanteaus. The first recorded use of "billion", mashing up "bi-" with "million" to indicate "a million to the second power"note  dates to 1690, and from there, the pattern stuck.
  • A quadrillion (10^15) is probably the lowest quantity that the layperson would not be able to recognize. It's at least the lowest division ending in "illion" that has no Wikipedia article.

 
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Video Example(s):

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1 Jillion Dollars

During Fry and Mom's bidding war for the anchovies, when Mom bids 23 million dollars, Fry counters with a shocking bid for one jillion. The auctioneer rightly points out, that Jillion isn't a number.

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Main / EleventyZillion

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