Timeline for English equivalent to the German "zig"
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 11, 2016 at 10:11 | comment | added | abligh | In British English we would say "umpteen million dollars" or "umpteen million" not "umpteen millions (of) dollars" or "umpteen millions", just like we say "ten million dollars" or "ten million" not "ten millions". | |
| May 11, 2016 at 4:23 | comment | added | Schism | @TRomano Perhaps this is a regional thing -- I know of the word umpteen, but I have never used it, nor has it ever come up in a conversation I've been in. It would sound very, very odd to me, whereas "millions of x" is exactly the way I'd put it. (I'm Canadian, for background.) | |
| May 10, 2016 at 21:00 | comment | added | J.R.♦ | @progressive_overload - Much more like it, but even that range might be a bit restrictive. We sometimes use words like millions or thousands just to give very rough order-of-magnitude approximations, e.g.: billions of stars in the universe; millions of neurons in the brain. Sometimes hyperbole comes into play, too: I can give you millions of reasons why... | |
| May 10, 2016 at 16:14 | comment | added | Willi Mentzel | 1,000,000 to 999,999,999 | |
| May 10, 2016 at 14:04 | comment | added | J.R.♦ | As a small side note, the cap on the first sentence is not 9,999,999. | |
| May 10, 2016 at 12:17 | comment | added | user24743 | @TRomano I edited my post while you were typing your comment. I agree that it goes better with "times" or "millions (of dollars)". | |
| May 10, 2016 at 12:16 | history | edited | user24743 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 10, 2016 at 12:14 | comment | added | TimR | umpteen is very informal, so Ngram is not really a valid way to assess how often speakers use it. I agree with you that its register makes it inappropriate for serious matters like war fatalities, or the number of homes destroyed in a tornado. But it is very broadly used in casual conversation to refer to a large number. "I have umpteen things to do this week. It's the worst time for my car to break down!" I removed the downvote, since we meant different things by "broadly". | |
| May 10, 2016 at 11:44 | comment | added | user24743 | @TRomano Did you try Ngram for it? books.google.com/ngrams/… I am curious what your definition of "broadly used". Would you say "Umpteen million people died" instead of "Millions of people died"? Note that the question was modified and I would not have said it is not very broadly used for the revised sentence as the context is different. | |
| May 10, 2016 at 11:26 | comment | added | TimR | -1. I've heard the word umpteen umpteen times. The register is informal. Compare "a gazillion". | |
| May 10, 2016 at 7:42 | history | answered | user24743 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |