entry
septuagintillion
/ˌsɛptuəˈdʒɪntɪljən/A thousand raised to the seventieth power
From Latin septuagint- (seventy).
from Latin septuāgintā + -illion. Coined by Alfred Holbrook, a principal of South-Western Normal School in Lebanon,...
from Latin septuāgintā + -illion. Coined by Alfred Holbrook, a principal of South-Western Normal School in Lebanon,...
Word Ancestry
from Latin septuāgintā + -illion. Coined by Alfred Holbrook, a principal of South-Western Normal School in Lebanon,...
from Latin septuāgintā + -illion. Coined by Alfred Holbrook, a principal of South-Western Normal School in Lebanon,...
Picture a nineteenth-century school administrator in Lebanon, Ohio, looking at the expanding family of million, billion, and trillion and deciding that English needed still more numerical machinery. In 1859, Alfred Holbrook coined “septuagintillion,” attaching the Latin word septuāgintā, “seventy,” to the number-making ending -illion. The result is not merely “a lot”: in the short scale, it names 10^213, a one followed by 213 zeros—far too many for ordinary arithmetic and barely imaginable as a pile of anything. The opening element is related to the biblical Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures traditionally associated with seventy translators; the same “seventy” idea also appears in septuagenarian, a person in their seventies. Today the word mostly lives in playful exaggeration, where saying “one septuagintillion” is less a measurement than a verbal attempt to make infinity look nervous.
The Story
Picture a nineteenth-century school administrator in Lebanon, Ohio, looking at the expanding family of million, billion, and trillion and deciding that English needed still more numerical machinery. In 1859, Alfred Holbrook coined “septuagintillion,” attaching the Latin word septuāgintā, “seventy,” to the number-making ending -illion. The result is not merely “a lot”: in the short scale, it names 10^213, a one followed by 213 zeros—far too many for ordinary arithmetic and barely imaginable as a pile of anything. The opening element is related to the biblical Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures traditionally associated with seventy translators; the same “seventy” idea also appears in septuagenarian, a person in their seventies. Today the word mostly lives in playful exaggeration, where saying “one septuagintillion” is less a measurement than a verbal attempt to make infinity look nervous.
Modern Usage
An absurdly or unimaginably large quantity; one Urban Dictionary entry gives 10^213.
Notable References
- Urban Dictionary example using septuagintillion as an exaggerated quantity
Kin & Kindred
From 'septuagint-'·seventy
Derived Terms
English words from this root
From '-illion'·a suffix forming names of very large numbers
Derived Terms
English words from this root
Sources
Urban Dictionary
Wikipedia
Wiktionary