Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The number 10 raised to the power 100 (10100), written out as the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros.
Wiktionary
WordNet 3.0
- n. a cardinal number represented as 1 followed by 100 zeros (ten raised to the power of a hundred)
Etymologies
- Made up in 1938 by the nine year old Milton Sirrota, the nephew of mathematician Edward Kasner who had asked Milton for the hypothetical number of 10 to the 100th. (Wiktionary)
- Coined at the age of nine by Milton Sirotta, nephew of Edward Kasner (1878-1955), American mathematician. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“June 30th, 2008 at 10: 32 am googol is 1 followed by 100 zeros. gladyz Says:”
“Famously, Page and Brin rented a garage as their startup home and, on September 4, 1998, launched Google Inc, a deliberate mis-spelling of the word googol, the mathematical term for a one followed by a hundred zeros.”
“In a nod to their geeky roots as children of computer science and math professors, Page and Brin had derived the name from the mathematical term "googol" - a 1 followed by 100 zeros.”
“First off, they specifically took the name of the company from the word googol, which is a very large number 1 with one hundred zeros after it, after first thinking of the word googolplex, which is 1 followed by a googol of zeros, as a symbol of the immense amount of data their search engine would search through.”
Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #155 | Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources
“The name itself springs from a number—a googol is a 1 followed by 100 zeros.”
“Even more impressive is a googol, which is greater than the number of particles in the known universe:”
“Google probably wanted to use 10e100, since that character string means 10 to the 100 power - in other words, a googol.”
Search Engine Optimization and Marketing News provided by Cumbrowski.com
“A googol is a one followed by a hundred zeros -- or, in technical terms, "a freakin 'ginormous number.”
“The company name is a play on the word googol, which refers to the number 1 followed by one hundred zeros.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘googol’.
-
Computers changed everything
Words that were well established before they gained special use in computing systems.
server, protocol, interface, bug, spam, virus, mouse, program, hack, chip, drive, window and 61 more...
-
6-letter words with precisely 1,2, & ...
allele, anatta, arrear, bedded, bettee, cocoon, doodad, gaggee, googol, hubbub, hammam, hummum and 30 more...
-
Really, Really Large Numbers
octillion, nonillion, decillion, undecillion, docdecillion, tredecillion, quattuordecillion, quindecillion, sexdecillion, septendecillion, octodecillion, novemdecillion and 74 more...
-
words
my words. my mind. my gosh.
try not to enjoy it too much.git, ghoti, sauce, quail, querulous, quarrelsome, reliability, untoward, incongruities, fission, fanatic, apple and 206 more...
-
Serendipity's Words
defenestration, mercurial, syzygy, wicked, iniquitous, metastable, demimonde, entropic, ephemeral, irreligious, frisbee, manifold and 474 more...
-
mager's Words
enigmatic, pragmatic, pulchritudinous, nincompoop, annihilation, sociality, entailment, acrosome, egalitarian, culture, technocracy, shenanigan and 541 more...
-
curligirli0's Words
crapulous, swish, shiatsu, zen, xenoglossy, nincompoop, loquacious, pianissimo, onomatopoeia, imperturbable, silky, hosanas and 379 more...
-
hedges's Words
wii, crepuscule, adumbrate, concatenation, sufi, qawwali, furry, riot, mellifluous, conspiracy, etymology, tea cozy and 369 more...
-
samuraizack's Words
floccinaucinihili..., pneumonoultramicr..., bombastic, existentialistic, velocipede, aglet, anatomical snuffbox, wonk, tang, funambulist, quakebuttock, flews and 390 more...
-
misterspee's Words
prolepsis, cumin, nacreous, lucre, obstreperous, nibble, nubbin, kenosis, frangible, aposiopesis, synecdoche, persiflage and 144 more...
-
JJMARLETTE's Words
phantasmagorical, antidisestablishm..., gargantuan, apocryphal, maim, disembowel, viscous, apothecary, seminal, exponential, googol, googolplex and 90 more...
-
Balderdash
If you've ever played the game "Balderdash," you may have heard of the 'Weird Words' category. This category lists some pretty strange words... these are a few examples of word you may come across ...
fackeltanz, bwlch, philtrum, dewlap, bunjibunji, ferdwit, baronduki, zamouse, sialogogue, shchekotiki, fipple, progger and 99 more...
-
bobfet1's Words
anathema, schadenfreude, sturm und drang, dadaism, serendipitous, obfuscate, kibosh, salacious, misogyny, kismet, madrasah, circumlocute and 129 more...
-
Monovocalics
Words that have only one of the vowels. On this list I include only words with at least three vowels. When I first started the list, if a word had several forms, I generally listed only the one wit...
syzygy, mirific, cumulus, homolog, monocot, bedewed, jezebel, referee, bikini, minikin, locomotor, terebenthene and 2359 more...
-
jimmynewland's Words
steganography, incunabulum, dog days, geekhood, risorgimento, ab initio, slugabed, humanism, diddly-squat, doch-an-dorris, snickersnee, rictus and 198 more...
-
Valse's Words
fastidious, fervent, bellicose, personification, onomatopoeia, burly, concomitant, tempura, serendipity, pecuniary, foment, chum and 418 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for googol.
marco_nj Choosing to name the company, 'Google' rather than Googol? Jan 17, 2009
rolig What was deliberate, Marco?
Jan 17, 2009
marco_nj When spelled correctly, it looks more evil, almost Tolkienish (next to Gorgoroth?), which of course would go against Google's "Do no Evil" credo. I'm sure this was deliberate. Jan 17, 2009
palooka How about a googolplex? Googol is the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros, or 10 raised to the power of 100. A googolplex is 10 raised to the power of a googol! That's a lot of damn zeros. Jan 6, 2007
mager not many people know what a googol is :) Jan 6, 2007