entry
vigintillion
/ˌvɪdʒɪnˈtɪljən/The number 10⁶³ in the short scale
From Latin viginti (twenty) + French / Italian number-naming tradition illion (a named large number or a power-of-thousand suffix).
Word Ancestry
Picture a medieval or early-modern number-maker stacking names onto a familiar giant: million, billion, trillion, and onward. The front half is much older and more dignified than the whole word looks: Latin vigintī meant “twenty,” and English still preserves that numeral in the combining form viginti-. The ending belongs to the expandable family of -illion names, a pattern that lets mathematicians keep marching through enormous quantities without writing endless zeros. In modern short-scale English, vigintillion means 10⁶³—one followed by sixty-three zeros—which is large enough to make ordinary “a lot” look comically underdressed. The word is therefore a linguistic machine: Latin supplies the number twenty, while -illion turns it into an astronomical-sized quantity; vigintillion is what happens when a classical numeral puts on a very, very long coat.
The Story
Picture a medieval or early-modern number-maker stacking names onto a familiar giant: million, billion, trillion, and onward. The front half is much older and more dignified than the whole word looks: Latin vigintī meant “twenty,” and English still preserves that numeral in the combining form viginti-. The ending belongs to the expandable family of -illion names, a pattern that lets mathematicians keep marching through enormous quantities without writing endless zeros. In modern short-scale English, vigintillion means 10⁶³—one followed by sixty-three zeros—which is large enough to make ordinary “a lot” look comically underdressed. The word is therefore a linguistic machine: Latin supplies the number twenty, while -illion turns it into an astronomical-sized quantity; vigintillion is what happens when a classical numeral puts on a very, very long coat.
Modern Usage
Informal user-generated slang uses vigintillion as an insult, adjective, or exclamation; some recorded senses are offensive.
Notable References
- Urban Dictionary entries for vigintillion
Kin & Kindred
From 'viginti'·twenty
Derived Terms
English words from this root
From 'illion'·a named large number or a power-of-thousand suffix
Derived Terms
English words from this root
Sources
Urban Dictionary
Wikipedia