Quattuordecillion

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The very large number equal to one followed by forty-five zeros, written as 10 to the power of 45 in modern usage
2. A cardinal number representing a 1 with forty-five zeros after it, a quantity so vast it is rarely needed in everyday counting
3. The numeral denoting ten raised to the forty-fifth power, which is one followed by forty-five zeros in the short scale system

Etymology: The word is a numerical coinage, and its shape is the whole story. Its first part comes from Latin "quattuordecim", meaning fourteen, and its ending, "-illion", is borrowed from the family of names built on "million", the large number that English took through Old French from Italian "milione". Each name in that series marks a power of a million: a billion is a million to the second power, a trillion to the third, and so on. The "-illion" ending is what makes the name sound grand, and it is also what makes it a little odd. Fourteen plus "-illion" produces a number that is ten to the 45th, which is far from a simple fourteen-fold extension of anything. Readers should not expect the prefix to tell them the size directly; it simply labels a place in the sequence of names, following the pattern set by the earlier words in the same series.