entry
googolplexian
/ˌɡuːɡəlˈplɛksiən/A one followed by a googolplex zeroes
From American English googolplex (An enormous named number: 10^(googol)).
Word Ancestry
In 1920, mathematician Edward Kasner asked his young nephew Milton Sirotta to invent a name for 10¹⁰⁰, and the boy supplied “googol”—a playful word that later inspired “googolplex.” Kasner published the idea in Mathematics and the Imagination in 1940, giving arithmetic a name that sounds less like a theorem and more like a cartoon character. Add the familiar suffix -ian, and googolplexian becomes a number-name stretched one astronomical notch further: a 1 followed by a googolplex zeroes. The suffix itself appears in words such as Appalachian and Einsteinian, where it means “connected with,” but here it behaves like a linguistic escalator for absurd size. The memorable trick is that googolplexian is not merely “very large”: it is a number whose written-out zeroes would themselves be counted by another famously impossible number.
The Story
In 1920, mathematician Edward Kasner asked his young nephew Milton Sirotta to invent a name for 10¹⁰⁰, and the boy supplied “googol”—a playful word that later inspired “googolplex.” Kasner published the idea in Mathematics and the Imagination in 1940, giving arithmetic a name that sounds less like a theorem and more like a cartoon character. Add the familiar suffix -ian, and googolplexian becomes a number-name stretched one astronomical notch further: a 1 followed by a googolplex zeroes. The suffix itself appears in words such as Appalachian and Einsteinian, where it means “connected with,” but here it behaves like a linguistic escalator for absurd size. The memorable trick is that googolplexian is not merely “very large”: it is a number whose written-out zeroes would themselves be counted by another famously impossible number.
Modern Usage
An informal internet expression for an unimaginably large quantity or a 1 followed by a googolplex zeroes.
Notable References
- Urban Dictionary entries describing googolplexian as the largest named number
Kin & Kindred
From 'googolplex'·An enormous named number: 10^(googol), or 1 followed by a googol zeroes
Derived Terms
English words from this root
From '-ian'·Relating to or characterized by
Derived Terms
English words from this root
Sources
Etymonline
Urban Dictionary
Wikipedia