Here's a funny little word in Greek: ψαμμακόσιοι (psammakósioi). It literally means 'sand-hundred', from ψάμμος 'sand' with the suffix for 'a hundred' attached. As you might have guessed, it conveys a huge uncountable sum. I love the mental imagery of that.
Does it come from Archimedes' treatise on large numbers entitled "the Sand grain counter"?
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sand_Reckoner
You should have clicked on the link provided in my post. It leads to the Perseus website entry for ψαμμακόσιοι. There, it sources to the playwright Eupolis who precedes Archimedes by a couple of centuries.
ReplyDeleteI see there's fodder yet for metric prefix creators, if we need something beyond exa-!
ReplyDeleteThere's already "zetta-" and "yotta-" (as well as their negative exponential counterparts, "zepto- and "yocto-"). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix
DeleteI see there's fodder yet for metric prefix creators, if we turn out to need something beyond "exa-"!
ReplyDelete