Laura Arjona Reina

About imprecise numbers

Laura Arjona Reina at

I like the Spanish invented, imprecise numbers. I wonder how they are in different languages.

For example, we have:

  • Un puñado (a handful, "puño" is the closed hand)
  • dieci... (10+?) (diecimuchos (10 + a lot), diecipocos (10+ a few), etc). Same with venti... (20+), treintay... (30+?) etc.
  • taytantos (30 to 99)
  • EDIT: cienes y cienes (several hundreds, a joke/malformation of the correct "cientos y cientos" (hundreds and hundreds))
  • tropecientos (several, many hundreds)
  • miles y miles (thousands and thousands, up to 99,999 I suppose)
  • tropecientosmil (several, many hundred thousands (up to 1 million, I suppose)
  • millones y millones (millions and millions)
  • tropecientosmil millones (many hundred thousand millions).
  • From here, you just change "millones" (millions) for billones, trillones, or whatever.
  • I also like to say "dos, o tres... cientos", "two, or three... hundreds" which is a number much higher than expected (expected 2-3, but real number is between 2 and 300). But this is a joke, I suppose it's not standard Spanish.
  • EDIT2: there's also "chorrocientas" or "chorrecientas" which is several hundreds, same as "tropecientas"

In English, I know "a handful", "zillion" and "gazillion" but I don't know any other. Do they exist? What about in other languages?

There is a very nice tale from Gianni Rodari, "A inventare i numeri", I've read it (in Spanish) with my son several times, he doesn't like it very much (maybe it's early for him) but I like it a lot.

Octavio Alvarez, Luis A. Guzman, hermesgabriel, Adrián Perales and 1 others likes this.

Luis A. Guzman shared this.

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In English, "several" would be the other main one.

You also have phrases like a "bunch", but that doesn't refer to any kind of fixed number range... I think what qualifies as a "bunch" would vary wildly based on the context...

Blaise Alleyne at 2015-07-25T17:03:28Z

"Several","Bunch"...? boooo! Don't you have funny invented numbers lower than zillion? :)

I found the Wikipedia page Indefinite and fictitious numbers which is quite interesting!!

Laura Arjona Reina at 2015-07-25T17:12:30Z

Sarah Elkins, jrobb likes this.

in english also

"a couple" (2, sometimes more in the south. <5)

"a few" (3-10?)

"several" (same as a few?)

"bunches" (>10?)

"lots" (>10)

"oodles" ..this is very uncommon. (>10)


Mostly not specifically tied to any number range.


plus the others like:

"hundreds"

"thousands"

"millions"


but those are just actual numbers of things.


jrobb at 2015-07-26T11:48:59Z

We use "chorrocientos" a lot (chorrocientas veces) in Mexico ;)
I thought you'll forget that one, but it was right at the bottom ;)

Luis A. Guzman at 2015-08-01T05:01:53Z