novemdecillion

English

Etymology

From Latin novemdecim, “nineteen” +‎ -illion; compare tredecillion, quattuordecillion, etc.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌnoʊvəmdəˈsɪl.i.ən/

  Rhymes: -ɪljən

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Numeral

novemdecillion (plural novemdecillions)

1. (US; modern British & Australian, short scale, rare) 10⁶⁰.
   • 1962, Jerry D. Lewis, Crusade against crime, Random House, page 314:

     It is one chance in a novemdecillion. For those who like to be precise, that exact statistic is one chance in 1,606,937,974,174,171,729,761,809,705,564,167,968,221,676,069,604,401,795,301,376.

   • 2010, SB Seymore, “Rethinking Novelty in Patent Law”, in Duke Law Journal:

     For an extreme example, see US Patent No. 5,422,351 (filed June 21, 1991). This particular patent includes a structural formula in claim 1 that encompasses at least one novemdecillion (10r^[sic], or one followed by sixty zeroes) chemical compounds

   • 1998, Sean O'Shea, Meryl A. Walker, The Millennium Myth: The Ever-Ending Story, →ISBN, page 66:

     It has the shape of a disk, and is ten to the fifty-ninth power yojanas in circumference, a number called a novemdecillion, and is 1,600,000 yojanas deep.

   • 2001 July 15, John Flanagan, “How much is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000?”, in Honolulu Star-Bulletin‎^[1], archived from the original on 17 May 2007:

     Go up to 60 zeros -- that's a novemdecillion -- and you can measure the volume of the galaxy in cubic inches [...].

   • 2008 December 22, Steven Hanke, “The Printing Press”, in Forbes:

     The index tells us that Zimbabwe's inflation rate recently peaked at 80 billion percent a month. That means around 6.5 quindecillion novemdecillion percent a year—or 65 followed by 107 zeros.

   • 2011, Sarah Harding, Niguma, Lady of Illusion, page 286:

     grangs med, literally “without count,” is also said to indicate the number ten to the fiftieth or sixtieth power (novemdecillion). Still less than a googol!

2. (dated British & Australian, long scale, rare) 10¹¹⁴.
3. (colloquial, hyperbolic) A very large but unspecified number (of).
   • 2000–2006: Quantum Mechanics, Abarim Publications [2]

     ‘When we say 2 we mean exactly 2, not 2,00001 or 2,0000000000000001 or 2 with a novemdecillion zeroes and then a 1...’.

   • 2002 CE: James C. Mayer, ‘Student-Led Poetry Workshops’ (which appears in ‘The English Journal’, volume 91, number 3, ‘Teaching and Writing Poetry’)

     ‘I then looked into the zatetic forest behind it / And saw a nonillion, no, a novemdecillion of them!’.

   • [3] ([4])

     ‘The odds that one of the Cowboys linebacking corps reads this blog is one in... oh, let’s use a really big number... a novemdecillion’.

Synonyms

• (10⁶⁰): a long scale decillion

Translations

10⁶⁰ — see also decillion

• Esperanto: dekiliono
• Finnish: dekiljoona (fi)
• French: décillion (fr) m
• Hungarian: decillió
• Japanese: 那由他 (ja) (なゆた, nayuta)
• Malay: novemdesilion (ms)
• Mongolian: өгүүлшгүй (mn) (ögüülšgüj)
• Polish: decylion m
• Russian: новемдециллион m (novemdecillion)

See also

• (short and long scale) Previous: octodecillion. Next: vigintillion.