Whether it’s bytes of data or intergalactic distances, humans are accumulating ever more massive amounts of data. But how do we use language to describe such mind-bogglingly huge numbers? There’s mega, as in mega-millions, and giga, as in gigabytes, but a California college student is urging international scientific authorities to adopt hella as a prefix to indicate a huge number: 10 to the 27th power. What are his chances for getting this slang term officially adopted as a unit of measurement? This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Prefix “Hella””
You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
Let’s talk about numbers for a minute.
Really big numbers.
Okay, now you got your mega, as in mega millions.
You got your giga, as in gigabyte, meaning a billion bytes, right?
But Grant, what about those times when you need a prefix for an even bigger number?
Like, say, oh, 10 to the 27th power.
What word are you going to use for that?
Gazile quadrillion.
I don’t know.
Make something up, right?
A bazillion?
Gazile bazillion.
Bigger than that.
Bigger than that.
Oh, really?
Well, yes.
There’s this Northern California college student who’s been waging this valiant campaign over the last few months
To get international scientific authorities to use the prefix Hela to indicate a multiple of one followed by 27 zeros.
So, for example, you’d say the mass of the Earth is approximately 6 heligrams, or the energy released by the sun is approximately 0.3 helawatts.
This student garnered hella support for this idea on Facebook.
He attracted about 63,000 people to support his idea, but he met some resistance from the International Consultative Committee on Units.
That is the scientific body that establishes these standards for the scientific community.
And Grant, you know as well as anybody how difficult it is to come up with a word and be all excited about it and then go out and get other people to use it.
Sure, it’s incredibly difficult to get your word out there, but 63,000 is not a bad start.
And I think he’s had some press about it and done some radio interviews, right?
He’s had a lot of press, yeah.
Got to keep an eye on this kid.
You never know.
He could be changing a language forever.
Yay!
My question for you is it’s not just measuring scientific units, right?
It has something to do with the amount of data that we’re accumulating.
We have a reason to use this prefix.
We have a need, right?
Yeah, because we are counting things of immense size.
Right, right, like the number of pennies in the federal deficit.
You know, that’s probably hella.
Hella million or what is it?
So how does it work?
So I say hellillion or no?
So it’s hella in front of a measurement, right?
Okay.
Right.
Okay.
And, of course, it’s a Northern California expression, right?
I mean, you’ve written about hella.
Yeah, yeah.
Hella is an adverb that basically means very.
Yeah, like we have a hella great show for you today.
Yeah, more coming up.
If you want to participate, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or put it in an email.
You do have email.
