sagan
/ˈseɪɡən/
sagan is the alternative letter-case form of Sagan.
Proper noun (1) capitalized: Sagan
Sagan (plural Sagans)
- A surname.
Noun capitalized: Sagan
Sagan (plural Sagans)
- A unit of measurement equal to at least four billion.
- Today, there is a well-known joke unit of measurement called a Sagan. a Sagan is four billion—the smallest number that could fit the description "billions and billions."2014, Gabrielle Borisovna, Carl Sagan
Proper noun (2) capitalized: Sagan
Sagan
Proper noun (3) capitalized: Sagan
Sagan
- Alternative form of Sakan (village in West Azerbaijan, Iran).
Proper noun (4) capitalized: Sagan
Sagan
- A river in southern Ethiopia.
- I had resolved to pass along the eastern shore of Lake Ganjule, in order to solve the problem of the sources of the river Sagan, the largest affluent of Lake Stefanie, which was supposed to flow out of Lake Ganjule. This I found to be not the case. The sources of the Sagan lie east of the south end...1904, Oscar Neumann, From the Somali Coast Through Southern Ethiopia to the Sudan, U.S. Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 784
- A town in southern Ethiopia, named for the river.
Forms of sagan
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | sagans |
| plural | Sagans |
| alternative form | sagan |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Sagans |
Origin of sagan
The unit is derived from the phrase "billions and billions (of stars)", erroneously attributed to the American astronomer Carl Sagan. The lower bound of such a number must be two billion plus two billion, or four billion. Johnny Carson popularized the phrase through his occasional impersonation of Sagan throughout his career.
Words formed from sagan
Words that rhyme with sagan
Questions about sagan
- What does sagan mean?
- Sagan means a surname.
- What is sagan the alternative letter-case form of?
- Sagan is the alternative letter-case form of Sagan.
- What part of speech is sagan?
- Sagan can be a proper noun or a noun.
- How do you pronounce sagan?
- Sagan is pronounced /ˈseɪɡən/.
Words near sagan in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sagan (page history and authors); Sagan (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Sagan.wav.
Cite this entry: “sagan.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sagan. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.