Many languages have words expressing indefinite and fictitious numbers—inexact terms of indefinite size, used for comic effect, for exaggeration, as

placeholder name Placeholder names are words that can refer to things or people whose names do not exist, are temporarily forgotten, are not relevant to the salient point at hand, are to avoid stigmatization, are unknowable/unpredictable in the context in wh ...

s, or when precision is unnecessary or undesirable. One technical term for such words is "non-numerical vague quantifier". Such words designed to indicate large quantities can be called "indefinite hyperbolic numerals".

Specific values used as indefinite

* In

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

, some words that have a precise numerical definition are often used indefinitely: couple, 2;

dozen A dozen (commonly abbreviated doz or dz) is a grouping of twelve. The dozen may be one of the earliest primitive integer groupings, perhaps because there are approximately a dozen cycles of the Moon, or months, in a cycle of the Sun, or year ...

, 12;

score Score or scorer may refer to: *Test score, the result of an exam or test Business * Score Digital, now part of Bauer Radio * Score Entertainment, a former American trading card design and manufacturing company * Score Media, a former Canadian ...

, 20;

myriad A myriad (from Ancient Greek grc, μυριάς, translit=myrias, label=none) is technically the number 10,000 (ten thousand); in that sense, the term is used in English almost exclusively for literal translations from Greek, Latin or Sinospher ...

, 10,000. Unlike

cardinal number In mathematics, cardinal numbers, or cardinals for short, are a generalization of the natural numbers used to measure the cardinality (size) of sets. The cardinality of a finite set is a natural number: the number of elements in the set. ...

s these can be pluralized, in which case they require ''of'' before the noun (''millions of dollars'', but ''five million dollars'') and require the indefinite article "a" in the singular (''a million letters'' (indefinite) but ''one million letters'' (definite)). * In various Middle Eastern traditions, the number 40 is used to express a large but unspecific number,"Biblical Criticism", ''The Classical Journal'' 36:71:83''ff'' (March 1827
full text
/ref> as in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" ( ar, علي بابا والأربعون لصا) is a folk tale from the '' One Thousand and One Nights''. It was added to the collection in the 18th century by its French translator Antoine Galland, who heard ...

'', and the

Forty Martyrs of Sebaste The Forty Martyrs of Sebaste or the Holy Forty (Ancient/Katharevousa Greek ''Ἅγιοι Τεσσεράκοντα''; Demotic: ''Άγιοι Σαράντα'') were a group of Roman soldiers in the Legio XII ''Fulminata'' (Armed with Lightning) w ...

.Michael David Coogan, ''A Brief Introduction to the Old Testament: The Hebrew Bible in Its Context'', Oxford, 2008, p. 116 This usage is sometimes found in English as well (for example, " forty winks"). * In

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

, ( 600) was used to mean a very large number, perhaps from the size of a Roman

cohort Cohort or cohortes may refer to: * Cohort (educational group), a group of students working together through the same academic curriculum * Cohort (floating point), a set of different encodings of the same numerical value * Cohort (military unit) ...

. English ''million'' derives from indefinite use of the Latin word for thousand, . * In

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

, 1001 is used similarly, as in ''The Book of

One Thousand and One Nights ''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ar, أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, italic=yes, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the ''Arabian ...

'' (''lit.'' "a thousand nights and one night"). Many modern English book titles use this convention as well: ''1,001 Uses for ...''. * In

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

, , 8000, is used: (''lit.'' 8,000 herbs) means a variety of herbs and (''lit.'' 8,000 generations) means eternity. * The number

10,000 10,000 (ten thousand) is the natural number following 9,999 and preceding 10,001. Name Many languages have a specific word for this number: in Ancient Greek it is (the etymological root of the word myriad in English), in Aramaic , in Hebrew ...

is used to express an even larger approximate number, as in Hebrew ''r^evâvâh'', rendered into Greek as , and to English ''

''. Similar usage is found in the

East Asian East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea ...

or (''lit.'' 10,000; ), and the

South Asian South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The region consists of the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.;;;;;;;; ...

lakh A lakh (; abbreviated L; sometimes written lac) is a unit in the Indian numbering system equal to one hundred thousand (100,000; scientific notation: 105). In the Indian 2,2,3 convention of digit grouping, it is written as 1,00,000. For e ...

(''lit.'' 100,000). * In

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

, 100,000 (''céad míle'') is used, as in the phrase ''céad míle fáilte'', "a hundred thousand welcomes" or

Gabriel Rosenstock Gabriel Rosenstock (born 29 September 1949) is an Irish writer who works chiefly in the Irish language. A member of Aosdána, he is poet, playwright, haikuist, tankaist, essayist, and author/translator of over 180 books, mostly in Irish. Born ...

's poetic phrase ("my hundred thousand loves"). * In

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peopl ...

, ''cant a mil'', literally "a hundred and thousand", is used to mean a large number in a similar way to English "a hundred and one". It is used in phrases such as ''cant a mil o bethau i'w wneud'' "a hundred and one things to do" i.e. "many, many things to do". * In

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

, or is used ( "fifty-eleven" and "seventy-eleven", although never actually intended to refer to the numbers 61 and 81). * In Chinese, , 108,000 li, means a great distance. * In Thai, ร้อยแปด (''roi paed)'', means both 108, and miscellaneous, various, plentiful. * In Hungarian, people often say "26 times" for expressing their impatience or dissatisfaction about a recurring act (for example, "26 times I told you that I know Peter!"). "''Csilliárd''" is also often used in the same "indefinitely large number" meaning as "zillion" in English. Probably humorous merging of words "''csillag''" ("star", referring to the large number of stars) and "''milliárd''" ("billion").

Umpteen

Umpteen, umteen or umpty is an unspecified but large

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual 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 much larger. "Umpty" is first attested in 1905, in the expression "umpty-seven", implying that it is a multiple of ten. (available online to subscribers) ''Ump(ty)'' came from a verbalization of a dash in

Morse code Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one ...

. "Umpteen", adding the ending ''-teen'', as in "thirteen", is first attested in 1918, (available online to subscribers)UmpteenMerriam-Webster
Accessed 2014-06-29. and has become by far the most common form. In Norwegian, ''ørten'' is used in a similar way, playing on the numbers from ''tretten'' (13) to ''nitten'' (19), but often signifying a much larger number.

-illion

Words with the

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carr ...

''-illion'' (e.g. zillion, gazillion, bazillion, jillion, bajillion, squillion, and others) are often used as informal names for unspecified large numbers by analogy to

names of large numbers Two naming scales for large numbers have been used in English and other European languages since the early modern era: the long and short scales. Most English variants use the short scale today, but the long scale remains dominant in many non-E ...

such as ''

million One million (1,000,000), or one thousand thousand, is the natural number following 999,999 and preceding 1,000,001. The word is derived from the early Italian ''millione'' (''milione'' in modern Italian), from ''mille'', "thousand", plus the a ...

'' (10⁶), ''

billion Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions: *1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is its only current meaning in English. * 1,000,000,000,000, i. ...

'' (10⁹) and ''

trillion ''Trillion'' is a number with two distinct definitions: *1,000,000,000,000, i.e. one million million, or (ten to the twelfth power), as defined on the short scale. This is now the meaning in both American and British English. * 1,000,000,000,00 ...

'' (10¹²). In

Estonian Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also * ...

, the compound word ''mustmiljon'' ("black million") is used to mean an unfathomably large number. These words are intended to denote a number that is large enough to be unfathomable and are typically used as

hyperbole Hyperbole (; adj. hyperbolic ) is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. In rhetoric, it is also sometimes known as auxesis (literally 'growth'). In poetry and oratory, it emphasizes, evokes strong feelings, and ...

or for comic effect. They have no precise value or order. They form ordinals and

fractions A fraction (from la, fractus, "broken") represents a part of a whole or, more generally, any number of equal parts. When spoken in everyday English, a fraction describes how many parts of a certain size there are, for example, one-half, eight ...

with the usual suffix ''-th'', e.g. "I asked her for the jillionth time", or "-illionaire" to describe a wealthy person.

Other

A " sagan" or "sagan unit" is a facetious name for a very large number, at least four billion, inspired by

Carl Sagan Carl Edward Sagan (; ; November 9, 1934December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on ex ...

's association with the phrase "

billions and billions ''Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium'' is a 1997 book by the American astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan. The last book written by Sagan before his death in 1996, it was published by Rando ...

".Sagan
at dictionary.reference.com (definition from the Jargon File) It is not to be confused with Sagan's number, the number of stars in the

observable universe The observable universe is a ball-shaped region of the universe comprising all matter that can be observed from Earth or its space-based telescopes and exploratory probes at the present time, because the electromagnetic radiation from these ob ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Indefinite And Fictitious Numbers Large numbers * de:Zahlennamen#Zillion