- 1
A squillion is a joke number. It is not a real amount, like a million or a billion — nobody could tell you how many a squillion is, because there is no answer. People invent it to mean "a huge amount, more than I can count, and I am on purpose." It is most often used about money: "he must earn a squillion dollars a year." It works like a normal number word in a sentence — you can say a squillion, squillions of, and even squillionaire for a very rich person. The tone is light and playful, and it is more common in British and Australian English than American. Because it is obviously not serious, it also lets a speaker complain or boast without sounding like they are lying — everybody understands the number is made up. Never use it when a real figure is expected.
天文數字、一大堆(開玩笑用的誇張數字,如中文的「幾百萬個」「一卡車」)
原始詞典資料1 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法,原文照列,我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的;有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
squillionnoun/ˈskwɪljən/
- 1
slangA very large, unspecified number (of).
- The word million was adequate for most things, billion came in handy on occasions, but if you wanted to use a word for a very, very large number, you just had to invent one. Anna invented one: a squillion.
- You thinks to yourself, ‘There’s a billion, trillion squillion of them, no one’s going to notice.’ But that’s where professionalism comes in, sort of thing.
資料來源:英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary(CC BY-SA 4.0)。 原文照列,未經改寫。