English

Numeral

eleventy

1. (humorous) The number 110, 11 × 10.

   Compounds with other numerals: eleventy-one (= 111), eleventy-six (= 116), eleventy-first (= one-hundred and eleventh), etc.

   1955 (1974), JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, page 43, 54:

   [Bilbo] announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday
   […]
   “Today is my one hundred and eleventh birthday: I am eleventy-one today!”

   1980, Janet Caudle, State and Interstate Fishery Jurisdiction: Problems and Progress : Proceedings of a Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, 1979 : October 29-31, 1979, page 149:

   without having to go back through the thousand and eleventy-three days to alter the plan

   2007, Doug Lowe, Networking for Dummies, page 174:

   Eight-Oh-Two-Dot-Eleventy Something [= 802.11a, 802.11b, etc.]

2. (colloquial) An indefinite large number.

   May 1921, Margaret Wilson, “A Little Boy's Utopia”, in The Atlantic Monthly, page 670:

   No grown-up people, no babies, no girls. It was a world of boys, eleventy and a hundred strong.

   2005, Robert M Sapolsky, Monkeyluv: And Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals, page 19:

   People used to think that the first eleventy letters of the DNA message would comprise Gene 1.

   • 2012 July 3, Marina Hyde, “A lesson in Olymp-o-nomics”, in The Guardian:

     According to a study by me, this generates a multibillion facepalm for the UK economy, making everyone who considers it at least eleventy hundred pounds unhappier.

Related terms

• eleventeen
• twelfty
• teenty