entry
googolplex
/ˈɡuːɡəlplɛks/Ten raised to the power of a googol
From American English googol (The number 10¹⁰⁰).
Word Ancestry
In 1938, mathematician Edward Kasner asked his nine-year-old nephew Milton Sirotta to name the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. Milton reportedly answered “googol,” a word with the clean, comic sound of a child inventing a monster. Kasner then needed a name for something even more absurd: 10 raised to the power of a googol, so he attached the playful ending “-plex.” The result is not merely huge; writing it out would require more zeros than there are particles one could conveniently gather in the observable universe. The word later became easy to confuse with “Google,” whose name was itself inspired by googol—so a child’s joke about numbers is now entangled with the name of the world’s most famous search engine.
The Story
In 1938, mathematician Edward Kasner asked his nine-year-old nephew Milton Sirotta to name the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. Milton reportedly answered “googol,” a word with the clean, comic sound of a child inventing a monster. Kasner then needed a name for something even more absurd: 10 raised to the power of a googol, so he attached the playful ending “-plex.” The result is not merely huge; writing it out would require more zeros than there are particles one could conveniently gather in the observable universe. The word later became easy to confuse with “Google,” whose name was itself inspired by googol—so a child’s joke about numbers is now entangled with the name of the world’s most famous search engine.
Modern Usage
A humorous or exaggerated term for an absurdly large quantity; one entry jokingly defines it as the number of calories in a Big Mac.
Kin & Kindred
From 'googol'·The number 10¹⁰⁰
Derived Terms
English words from this root
From '-plex'·A playful numerical extension or multiplication
Derived Terms
English words from this root
Sources
Free Dictionary
Urban Dictionary
Wikipedia