• n. 10的100 次方；天文數(shù)字

據(jù)說是來自19 世紀(jì)美國數(shù)學(xué)家Edward Kasner 的侄子創(chuàng)造的詞。Kasner 希望為10 的100 次 方取一個(gè)好名字，苦思不得其解，開玩笑問他侄子，他侄子正沉迷于漫畫小說人物Barney Google,就建議叫g(shù)oogol.于是，一個(gè)新詞就誕生了。從某種程度上也反映出取名字的嚴(yán)肅和 隨意的雙重性質(zhì)，當(dāng)想不出一個(gè)好名字的時(shí)候，很可能就隨便取個(gè)名字。比較guillotine.

googol

googol: [20] There are comparatively few ‘new’ words in the English language – that is, words which have not been made up from combinations of old words, or borrowed from other languages, but have sprung up as entirely new growths – but this is one of them. When in the 1930s the American mathematician Dr Edward Kasner was trying to think of a name for an unimaginably large number, ten to the power of a hundred, he asked his nine-year-old nephew Milton Serotta for a suggestion, and googol was what he got. It has never really caught on in technical use, although it has spawned a compound of its own – the googolplex, ten to the power of a googol.

googol (n.)

number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeroes, 1940, in "Mathematics and the Imagination," a layman's book on mathematics written by U.S. mathematicians Edward Kasner (1878-1955) and James R. Newman, the word supposedly coined a year or two before by Kasner's 9- (or 8-) year-old nephew (unnamed in the book's account of the event), when asked for a name for an enormous number. Perhaps influenced by comic strip character Barney Google. Googolplex (10 to the power of a googol) coined at the same time, in the same way, with plex.