Word.ws English Dictionary

googol

/ˈɡuː.ɡəl//ˈɡu.ɡəl/

googol numeral: the number 10¹⁰⁰, or ten to the power of a hundred. Equivalent to ten duotrigintillion (short scale), or ten sexdecilliard (long scale).

Numeral

googol (plural googols)

  1. The number 10¹⁰⁰, or ten to the power of a hundred. Equivalent to ten duotrigintillion (short scale), or ten sexdecilliard (long scale).
    • Words of wisdom are spoken by children at least as often as by scientists. The name "googol" was invented by a child (Dr. Kasner's nine-year-old nephew) who was asked to think up a name for a very big number, namely, 1 with a hundred zeros after it. He was very certain that this number was not...1940, Edward Kasner, James [Roy] Newman, “New Names for Old”, in Mathematics and the Imagination, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →OCLC, page 23
    • For example, in considering all the finite state grammars that use seven terminal symbols and seven auxiliary symbols (states), [...] he must test over a googol (10^100) candidates.1979, Steven Pinker, “Formal models of language learning”, in Language, Cognition, and Human Nature

googol meaning in Malay and Thai

googol in Malay

1 followed by 100 zeros
puluh duotrigintilion

googol in Thai

1 followed by 100 zeros
กูกอล googon

Forms of googol

pluralgoogols

Origin of googol

Coined by nine-year-old Milton Sirotta in 1920, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, who had asked Milton to think of a name for the 100th power of ten. The word was first published in the book Mathematics and the Imagination (1940).

Words formed from googol

Words that rhyme with googol

Questions about googol

What does googol mean?
Googol means the number 10¹⁰⁰, or ten to the power of a hundred. Equivalent to ten duotrigintillion (short scale), or ten sexdecilliard (long scale).
What is googol in Malay?
Googol in Malay is puluh duotrigintilion. See Googol meaning in Malay.
What part of speech is googol?
Googol is a numeral.
How do you pronounce googol?
Googol is pronounced /ˈɡuː.ɡəl/ (UK).

Words near googol in the dictionary

  1. googly moogly
  2. googly-eyed
  3. googly-moogly
  4. googob
  5. googobs
  6. googol
  7. googolbyte
  8. googolbytes
  9. googolduplex
  10. googolfold
  11. googolgon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: googol (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-googol.ogg, en-uk-Google.ogg.

Cite this entry: “googol.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/googol. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.