gorillion

English

Etymology

From gorilla (arbitrary, used for sound) +‎ -illion.

Pronunciation

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪljən

Noun

gorillion (plural gorillions)

1. (slang, sometimes humorous, hyperbolic) An unspecified large number (of).

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:zillion

   • 2011, “THE BCS FINES THE FIESTA BOWL A GORILLION DOLLARS”, in Every Day Should Be Saturday‎^[1]:

     The sum of one million dollars seems more randomly absurd than unjust, piddling, or anything else you can come up with to describe a punishment for the Fiesta's corruption. It might as well have been one billion, or one gorillion dollars. The sum isn't important.

   • 2012, “900 Trillion Dollars”, in Parker Live‎^[2]:

     It’s actually a quadrillion, although it could just as easily be a bazillion, a gorillion, a donkeykongillion or a shakazuluillion, because the number is so large that we really don’t even use it, especially when we’re talking about money.

   • 2016, “Leading Jewish figures targeted with renewed online antisemitism”, in Jerusalem Post‎^[3]:

     I'm impressed you haven't mentioned Muh Holocaust and the 6 Gorillion yet.

   • 2017, “A brief dictionary to help understand the US far right”, in Al Jazeera‎^[4]:

     While most scholars and experts agree that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, white supremacists and neo-Nazis often use this fictional number - 6 Gorillion - to suggest that the number is exaggerated.

   • 2018, (((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump, page 131:

     The echoes were supposed to be a visual representation of a booming voice pronouncing Jewish surnames as vil - "closed captioning for the Jew-blind," as one anti-Semite put it. "All Jewish surnames echo throughout history," explained the Right Stuff, the blog that hosted the podcast. “The echoes repeat the sad tale as they communicate the emotional lessons of our great white sins, imploring us to Never Forget the 6 GoRillion.” In typical fashion the inventors of the echoes also had their own obscure symbolism for each parenthetical swoosh: the inner parenthess stand for the Jewish subversion of the home and the destruction of the family through "mass-media degeneracy"; the middle parentheses represent the destruction of the nation through mass migration; and the outer parentheses stand for international Jewry and world Zionism

Usage notes

The word "gorillion" is often used by white supremacists and Holocaust deniers in the form of "six gorillion", which mocks the figure of six million Jews that died during the Holocaust.