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Names of larger numbers, however, have a tenuous, artificial existence, rarely found outside definitions, lists, and discussions of how large numbers are named. Even well-established names like sextillion are rarely used, since in the context of science, including astronomy, where such large numbers often occur, they are nearly always written ...
-yllion (pronounced / aɪ lj ən /) [1] is a proposal from Donald Knuth for the terminology and symbols of an alternate decimal superbase [clarification needed] system. In it, he adapts the familiar English terms for large numbers to provide a systematic set of names for much larger numbers.
Large numbers, far beyond those encountered in everyday life—such as simple counting or financial transactions—play a crucial role in various domains.These expansive quantities appear prominently in mathematics, cosmology, cryptography, and statistical mechanics.
These words are intended to denote a number that is large enough to be unfathomable and are typically used as hyperbole or for comic effect. They have no precise value or order. They form ordinals and fractions with the usual suffix -th, e.g. "I asked her for the jillionth time", or are used with the suffix "-aire" to describe a wealthy person.
In English, these higher words are hundred 10 2, thousand 10 3, million 10 6, and higher powers of a thousand (short scale) or of a million (long scale—see names of large numbers). These words cannot modify a noun without being preceded by an article or numeral (*hundred dogs played in the park), and so are nouns.
Hyphenate all numbers under 100 that need more than one word. For example, $73 is written as “seventy-three,” and the words for $43.50 are “Forty-three and 50/100.”
Far larger finite numbers than any of these occur in modern mathematics. For instance, Graham's number is too large to reasonably express using exponentiation or even tetration. For more about modern usage for large numbers, see Large numbers. To handle these numbers, new notations are created and used. There is a large community of ...
Similarly, some are only derived from words for numbers inasmuch as they are word play. (Peta-is word play on penta-, for example. See its etymology for details.) The root language of a numerical prefix need not be related to the root language of the word that it prefixes. Some words comprising numerical prefixes are hybrid words.