Dictionary

novemdecillion en · NUM

Pronunciation

• (US) audio
• /ˌnoʊvəmdəˈsɪl.i.ən/

Etymology

From Latin novemdec(im) (“nineteen”) + -illion; compare tredecillion, quattuordecillion, etc.

Meanings

1. (US, qualifier:modern British & Australian; short scale; modern British & Australian; short scale, rare) 10⁶⁰.
   • 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! 2011, Sarah Harding, Niguma, Lady of Illusion, page 286:
   • 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. 1998, Sean O'Shea, Meryl A. Walker, The Millennium Myth: The Ever-Ending Story, →ISBN, page 66:
   • 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. 1962, Jerry D. Lewis, Crusade against crime, Random House, page 314:
   • 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 2010, SB Seymore, “Rethinking Novelty in Patent Law”, in Duke Law Journal:
   • Go up to 60 zeros -- that's a novemdecillion -- and you can measure the volume of the galaxy in cubic inches [...]. 2001 July 15, John Flanagan, “How much is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000?”, in Honolulu Star-Bulletin, archived from the original on 17 May 2007:
   • 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. 2008 December 22, Steven Hanke, “The Printing Press”, in Forbes:
2. (dated, qualifier:British & Australian; long scale; British & Australian; long scale, rare) 10¹¹⁴.
3. (colloquial, excessive) A very large but unspecified number (of).
   • ‘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’. http://www.knowyourdallascowboys.com/?p=601 (http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:OFegiwwAB7oJ:faircatch.net/player/terrell_owens+novemdecillion&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=134)
   • 2000–2006: Quantum Mechanics, Abarim Publications http://www.abarim-publications.com/JessicaRabbitExplains.html ‘When we say 2 we mean exactly 2, not 2,00001 or 2,0000000000000001 or 2 with a novemdecillion zeroes and then a 1...’.
   • ‘I then looked into the zatetic forest behind it / And saw a nonillion, no, a novemdecillion of them!’. 2002 CE: James C. Mayer, ‘Student-Led Poetry Workshops’ (which appears in ‘The English Journal’, volume 91, number 3, ‘Teaching and Writing Poetry’)

Forms

Relateds

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

Synonyms

1060 (a long scale decillion) · undevigintillion

Translations (9)

fi dekiljoona (1060 — see also decillion) · ms novemdesilion (1060 — see also decillion) · fr décillion (1060 — see also decillion) · pl decylion (1060 — see also decillion) · ru новемдециллион (1060 — see also decillion) · hu decillió (1060 — see also decillion) · ja 那由他 (1060 — see also decillion) · eo dekiliono (1060 — see also decillion) · mn өгүүлшгүй (1060 — see also decillion)