English edit

Etymology edit

From Latin novemdecim, nineteen.

Pronunciation edit

  • IPA(key): /ˌnoʊvəmdəˈsɪl.i.ən/
    Rhymes: -ɪljən
  • (file)

Numeral edit

novemdecillion (plural novemdecillions)

  1. (US; modern British & Australian, short scale, rare) 1060.
    • 1962, Jerry D. Lewis, Crusade against crime, Random House, page 314:
      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.
    • 2010, SB Seymore, “Rethinking Novelty in Patent Law”, in Duke Law Journal:
      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
    • 1998, Sean O'Shea, Meryl A. Walker, The Millennium Myth: The Ever-Ending Story, →ISBN, page 66:
      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.
    • 2001 July 15, John Flanagan, “How much is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000?”, in Honolulu Star-Bulletin[1], archived from the original on 17 May 2007:
      Go up to 60 zeros -- that's a novemdecillion -- and you can measure the volume of the galaxy in cubic inches [...].
    • 2008 December 22, Steven Hanke, “The Printing Press”, in Forbes:
      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.
    • 2011, Sarah Harding, Niguma, Lady of Illusion, page 286:
      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!
  2. (dated British & Australian, long scale, rare) 10114.
  3. A very large number
    • 2000–2006: Quantum Mechanics, Abarim Publications [2]
      When we say 2 we mean exactly 2, not 2,00001 or 2,0000000000000001 or 2 with a novemdecillion zeroes and then a 1...’.
    • 2002 CE: James C. Mayer, ‘Student-Led Poetry Workshops’ (which appears in ‘The English Journal’, volume 91, number 3, ‘Teaching and Writing Poetry’)
      I then looked into the zatetic forest behind it / And saw a nonillion, no, a novemdecillion of them!’.
    • [3] ([4])
      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’.

Synonyms edit

Translations edit

See also edit