Fun With Words: Numbers Eight is the first number alphabetically. Zero is the last. Four is the only number that, spelled out, has as many letters. Fifty and seventy are the only numbers divisible by ten that, when spelled out, have as many letters as ten divides into them. Therefore, fifty-four and seventy-four are equal to the numbers you get when you count the letters digit by digit. Thirty-six and forty-five have this same property in reverse, that is, the first word has the same number of letters as the second digit, and vice versa. Forty is the only number whose letters are in alphabetical order. One is the only number whose letters are in reverse alphabetical order. First also has its letters in alphabetical order. Eighty-eight, eleven letters long, is the longest number that is normally typed using strictly alternating hands (ignoring the hyphen). Interchangeability is the word in the English language that contains the letters to form the most numbers. Its letters can form the words three, eight, nine, ten, thirteen, thirty, thirty-nine, eighty, eighty-nine, ninety, and ninety-eight.

Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice In Wonderland , once noted that "eleven plus two" and "twelve plus one" use the same letters and produce the same sum. First Appearances of Letters One thousand is the first number that, when spelled out, contains an a. (One hundred and one if you count the "and.") One billion is the first number that contains a b. One octillion is the first number that contains a c. One hundred is the first number that contains a d. Zero is the first number that contains an e. Starting from one, it's one. Four is the first number that contains an f. Eight is the first number that contains a g. Three is the first number that contains an h. Five is the first number that contains an i. The letters j and k do not appear in the English spelling of any cardinal number. Eleven is the first number that contains an l. One million is the first number that contains an m. One is the first number that contains an n. Zero is the first number that contains an o. Starting from one, it's one. One septillion is the first number that contains a p. One quadrillion is the first number that contains a q.

Zero is the first number that contains an r. Starting from one, it's three. Six is the first number that contains an s. Two is the first number that contains a t. Four is the first number that contains a u. Five is the first number that contains a v. Two is the first number that contains a w. Six is the first number that contains an x. Twenty is the first number that contains a y. Zero is the first and only number that contains a z. (One zillion is not a real number.) Seven is the first number not to contain any letter for the first time. One octillion, the first number containing a c, is the largest number to contain any letter for the first time. Back to MURDEROUS MATHS: The most pathetic and useless facts... The Most Pathetic Fact in Maths The 8th MM book is full of P.U.F.s (Perfectly Useless Facts) so before it was published we asked everyone to vote for the most pathetic, irritating and useless fact in maths! ☺ Many thanks to the thousands of you who voted, and you'll find the full results of our poll in "NUMBERS: the Key to the Universe".

Here are the facts - which one would YOU choose as the most pathetic? (Check your answer with our result at the end of the list.) If you multiply 1089 x 9 you get 9801. It's reversed itself! This also works with 10989 or 109989 or 1099989 and so on. 1 is the only positive whole number that you can add to 1,000,000 and you get an answer that's bigger than if you multiply it by 1,000,000 19 = 1 x 9 + 1 + 9 and 29 = 2 x 9 + 2 + 9. This also works for 39,49,59,69,79,89 and 99. 153, 370, 371 and 407 are all the "sum of the cubes of their digits".

In other words 153=13+53+33 If you divide any square number by 8 you get a remainder of 0, 1 or 4. 2 is the only number that gives the same result added to itself as it does times by itself If you multiply 21978 by 4 it turns backwards There are 12,988,816 different ways to cover a chess board with 32 dominoes. Sixty nine squared = 692 = 4761 and sixty nine cubed = 693 = 328509. These two answers use all the digits from 0 to 9 between them. You can chop a big lump of cheese into a maximum of 93 bits with 8 straight cuts In the English language "forty" is the only number that has all its letters in alphabetical order. 1 � 37 = 0�027027027... and 1 � 27 = 0�037037037...

132 = 169 and if you write both numbers backwards you get 312 = 961. This also works with 12 because 122 = 144 and 212 =441. 1/1089 = 0�00091827364554637281... (And the numbers in the 9 times table are 9,18,27,36...) 8 is the only cube that is 1 less than a square. To multiply 10,112,359,550,561,797,752,808,988,764,044,943,820,224,719 by 9 you just move the 9 at the very end up to the front. It's the only number that does this.

(Thank goodness!) The number FOUR is the only number in the English language that is spelt with the same number of letters as the number itself 1x9 +2 = 11 , 12x9 +3 = 111 , 123x9+4 = 1111 and so on. Have you decided which fact you think is the MOST pathetic? If you want to see our winner, click and drag your mouse across the blank box: * Fact 11 was easily voted the most pathetic! * ☺ Some visitors even sent their own facts which we've included here. Do you have a pathetic number fact that we should include? If so please let us know! The best ones will appear here. AL enlightened our lives by telling us that TWENTY NINE is the only number that is written with as many strokes as its numerical value! (You need to write Y with 3 strokes) Gareth Latty tells us that there are 169,518,829,100,544,000,000,000,000,000 ways to play the first ten moves in a game of chess!

Matthew Sheeran says that 3,608,528,850,368,400,786,036,725 has 25 digits and divides by 25. BUT... it you just take the first n digits, the result will divide by n. For example, 360852 are the first 6 digits and 360852 divides by 6. Charles Symons tells us that he likes the 1729 fact - it's the lowest number that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways! In other words: 1729= 93+ 103 OR 13+ 123 Philip Davies says that an "octillion" is the lowest positive number to contain a letter "c". How mind numbingly useless - we salute you Philip! However a visitor called Peter pointed out that one octillionth is smaller... Philip Davies (again) says that "ONE" is the only number in the English language to have its letters in reverse alphabetical order.

Sylvan Golden says that the biggest number you can make with three digits and any operators is 9 to the power of 9 to the power of 9. As 99 = 387420489, the final number is 9387420489 = er...well actually as it has about 200 million digits we won't bother writing it out! The PURE MATHEMATICIANS say that you can make an even bigger number with three digits and operators by having 9! to the power of 9! to the power of 9! (9!=9x8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1). ARGHHHH! HU YI JIE from Singapore has this peculiar sum: TWELVE PLUS ONE is an anagram of ELEVEN PLUS TWO. HU YI JIE (again) says 183 =&nbsp5832 and 184 =&nbsp104976 and that uses all the digits 0-9 (just like the "69" fact above).

THE BAD HAIR BEAR tells us that 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321. SITA tells us that the Spanish word for five is "cinco" and it's the only Spanish number to have the same number of letters in its name. (See fact 17 above) MENGQI LI from China tells us that 1 � 14 = 0.0714285714285714285... and 7,14, and 28 are factors and multiples of 14 and the 5 tells you how many digits 71428 has before they repeat! BEEP from Ipswich tells us if you want to add all the numbers 1-10 , you just divide the 10 by 2 then write the answer out twice=55. Also all the numbers 1-100 is 100/2 written twice i.e. 5050.

This also works for 1-1000, 1-10000, 1-100000 etc! RIDWAN says that 144 is the twelfth number in the Fibonici series 144 and it is also twelve squared! ALEX JEFFREYS tells us that 12 + 22 + 32 + 42 + 52 +... +222 + 232 + 242 = 702 And teacher JANET BATTY tells us that 1274953680 has two odd things about it: it uses all the digits 0-9 AND you can divide it exactly by any number from 1-16. Nice one Janet. Only one number in the English Language... - xkcd xkcd Quote Post by oarick » Tue Nov 24, 2009 1:37 am UTC There is only one number in the English language that is spelled in alphabetical order. What is it? Bonus points if you can prove there is only one. Super bonus points if you can prove me wrong.

Example: "CHIPS" is spelled in alphabetical order; "SHIPS" is not. Post by Qaanol » Tue Nov 24, 2009 1:46 am UTC Spoiler: Well, the cardinal number forty is in alphabetical order. So are e, i, and many Roman Numerals. The ordinal first is too. wee free kings Post by Apple π » Tue Nov 24, 2009 4:40 am UTC Before looking at the spoiler, Spoiler: forty was the only number I could think of. As this is limited to "numbers in the English language" only the official spellings for the numbers [0,∞) will work. The only number that would be able to satisfy this would be a base number, a number 0-19, or a multiple of 10 from 20 to 90.

All other numbers in the English language are composites of the following numbers which are individually checked: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90,100, 1000, 1,000,000 , 1,000,000,000 etc. The only possible number other than Spoiler: forty Joined: Tue Nov 28, 2006 6:09 am UTC Location: San Francisco Quote Post by skeptical scientist » Tue Nov 24, 2009 6:17 am UTC There are also some nonstandard numbers which don't fall into your above categories, such as zillion/gazillion/etc., googol, googolplex, a couple, and so on. I can't find any which work, but your uniqueness proof doesn't rule them out.

I'm looking forward to the day when the SNES emulator on my computer works by emulating the elementary particles in an actual, physical box with Nintendo stamped on the side. "With math, all things are possible." —Rebecca Watson Post by timonan » Tue Nov 24, 2009 9:42 am UTC How about e? Post by mr-mitch » Tue Nov 24, 2009 10:17 am UTC skeptical scientist wrote: There are also some nonstandard numbers which don't fall into your above categories, such as zillion/gazillion/etc., googol, googolplex, a couple, and so on. I can't find any which work, but your uniqueness proof doesn't rule them out. It is evident at any division, from "hundred" to "googolplex", and so on and so forth you're going to have a number which isn't spelt in alphabetical order, because they aren't spelt in alphabetical order. The answer is the only one because of the way we speak of that place value. Sure, we could come up with some way of saying another number specifically designed to thwart this problem, but why?

Joined: Tue Nov 28, 2006 6:09 am UTC Location: San Francisco Quote Post by skeptical scientist » Tue Nov 24, 2009 11:54 am UTC I don't know what you mean by any "division". We're talking about english words and phrases, not numbers, and while a word or phrase can only specify one number (or an indeterminate quantity), it is entirely possible that different words can name the same number. Some examples would be one hundred and ten vs. eleventy, or (extrapolating a bit with latin prefixes) ten duotrigintillion vs. a googol. It's not a matter of "coming up with" a new way of saying a number - these ways already exist and are incorporated into the language. I don't happen to know many examples like googol and eleventy which provide names outside the standard naming scheme; I was just pointing out that the above argument applies only to the standard naming scheme, and not other incidental names for numbers such as these.

I'm looking forward to the day when the SNES emulator on my computer works by emulating the elementary particles in an actual, physical box with Nintendo stamped on the side. "With math, all things are possible." —Rebecca Watson Post by Tirian » Tue Nov 24, 2009 12:38 pm UTC skeptical scientist wrote: I don't know what you mean by any "division". You can construct a formal language that would generate all formal spellings of numbers in English using an alphabet made up of words like "two", "eleven", "thousand", maybe "and" depending on where you live, and then prefixes and suffixes like "sept" and "illion" which gets arcane in a hurry but is still of reasonable size so far as I know. (Not that describing numbers over six digits is strictly necessary for this problem since "-illion" itself is not in alphabetical order.) I suspect that the argument is that the generation rules of that language applied to that subset of that alphabet that was permitted under the terms of the problem is quickly seen to only generate a single number.

Quote Post by mr-mitch » Tue Nov 24, 2009 1:28 pm UTC Division as in pronouncing different parts of the number at different times, eg one million, seventy seven hundred and forty two. Each time you use any of the divisions, they're not in alphabetical order, and you can't ignore the letters of other divisions, so you don't have to consider large numbers - they're already rejected. Sure it is probable for another pronouncing scheme to exist such that there exists more than one number of which in the English alphabet has its pronunciation written in alphabetical order, but not only is that as much reaching as rearranging the letters of the alphabet, it's not a matter of coming up with a new way, it's just that those ways are either irrelevant or pointless. Then you've also got to consider that no digit is written in alphabetical order, so even then the only way to come up with one is to omit certain letters, which is relevant to the answer, but too neurotic to consider. It also has to be a relatively simple number, since any number with more than 26 letters is bound to repeat, or you could even consider vowels and word structure to further restrict the set of possibilities.

Regardless, although it is probable, there is little need to consider it. Post by Adacore » Thu Nov 26, 2009 10:46 am UTC mr-mitch wrote: It also has to be a relatively simple number, since any number with more than 26 letters is bound to repeat, or you could even consider vowels and word structure to further restrict the set of possibilities. I'd just like to point out that while the solution has already been stated and I don't think another exists (outside 'special' numbers represented by single letters), a word with 26 or more letters does not by strict logic absolutely have to break the alphabetical-order rule, as double letters could be adjacent. Fairly obviously, no such word exists, but that doesn't preclude the fact that such a word theoretically could exist. A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia, Page 15 Last revision: June 20, 2014 MATHEMATICS The system for naming large numbers used here is the one shown in MWCD10.

Words such as unvigintillion, trigintillion, novemnonagintillion, etc., which are found in extensions of this system, are generally not used here; "and" is not allowed in the name of a number. Number names are limited to those that represent positive integers between 1 and 10 66 . Names involving googol and googolplex are not used. Most of the information in this mathematics section was contributed by Eric Brahinsky and Paul Wright. EIGHT is the first whole number, if all whole numbers are arranged in alphabetical order; ZERO would be the last number [Stuart Kidd].

By standard dictionary alphabetizing procedure (i.e., ignoring spaces, punctuation, etc.), the first ten number names alphabetically are: eight The smallest natural number whose name is spelled with: 3 letters is 1 (one); 4 letters is 4 (four); 5 letters is 3 (three); 6 letters is 11 (eleven); 7 letters is 15 (fifteen); 8 letters is 13 (thirteen); 9 letters is 17 (seventeen); 10 letters is 24 (twenty-four); 15 letters is 103 (one hundred three); 20 letters is 124 (one hundred twenty-four); 25 letters is 1104 (one thousand one hundred four); 30 letters is 1117 (one thousand one hundred seventeen); 40 letters is 13,373 (thirteen thousand three hundred seventy-three); 50 letters is 113,373 (one hundred thirteen thousand three hundred seventy-three); 100 letters is 11,373,373,373 (eleven billion three hundred

 seventy-three million three hundred seventy-three thousand three hundred seventy-three).

Hans Havermann has greatly expanded the above list at chesswanks.com/num/a080777.html . He has also compiled a list of the largest numbers less than 10 66 whose name has a given number (3-758) of letters at chesswanks.com/num/a052196.html . The smallest natural number whose name uses the five vowels a, e, i, o, u (in any order) is 1005 (one thousand five). The smallest natural number whose name uses the six vowels a, e, i, o, u, y (in any order) is 1025 (one thousand twenty-five). The smallest natural number whose name uses the five vowels a, e, i, o, u in order is 1084 (one thousand eighty-four). The smallest natural number whose name uses the six vowels a, e, i, o, u, y in order would appear to be 1,000,000,000,008,020 (one quadrillion eight thousand twenty).

Eight number names use only one distinct vowel: THREE, SEVEN, TEN, ELEVEN, TWELVE, and SEVENTEEN use only e; SIX uses only i; and TWO uses only o. Numbers whose names use exactly two distinct vowels, however, go as high as six vigintillion six nonillion six octillion six trillion six billion six million six (using i and o)." The longest whole-number name consisting entirely of alternating consonants and vowels is NINETY-SEVEN. However, if all integers are allowed, NEGATIVE NINETY-SEVEN would qualify. In writing the names of the natural numbers one, two, three, four, five, six, etc., remarkably the letter A is not used until ONE THOUSAND. The letter A is not used twice until ONE QUADRILLION ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND. [Paul Wright] [Note that, for example, ONE HUNDRED AND ONE includes an A, but for this page the preferred U. S. naming convention which does not use the word AND is used, as explained at the top of the page.] The letter B is not used until ONE BILLION. No number name contains two B’s.

The complete list of smallest natural numbers whose names contain each respective letter of the alphabet follows: a - one thousand, b - one billion, c - one octillion, d - one hundred, e - one, f - four, g - eight, h - three, i - five, j - (none), k - (none), l - eleven, m - one million, n - one, o - one, p - one septillion, q - one quadrillion, r - three, s - six, t - two, u - four, v - five, w - two, x - six, y - twenty, z - (none) The complete list of the smallest natural numbers whose names contain two a’s, two b’s, etc., follows: a - one quadrillion one thousand, c - one decillion one octillion, d - one hundred, e - three, f - fifteen, g - eighty-eight, h - thirty-three, i - thirty-five, l - eleven thousand eleven, m - one novemdecillion one million, n - nine, o - forty-one, p - one septdecillion one septillion, q - one quintillion one quadrillion, r - thirty-three, s - sixty-six

, t - thirteen, u - one hundred four, v - seventy-five, w - twenty-two, x - sixty-six, y - twenty thousand twenty.

The above list was provided by Paul Wright and Eric Brahinsky. The smallest whole number using all 23 letters that are used in naming numbers is one octillion one septillion one quadrillion one billion one million two thousand five hundred sixty-eight (1,001,000,000,001,000,001,001,002,568). The largest number whose name does NOT contain the letter "n" is EIGHTY-EIGHT. The first Roman numeral alphabetically is C (100); the last is XXXVIII (38). The first odd Roman numeral alphabetically is CCCI (301); the last is XXXVII (37). The only integer names with no repeated letters are ZERO, ONE, TWO, FOUR, FIVE, SIX, EIGHT, TEN, FORTY, FORTY-SIX, SIXTY, SIXTY-ONE, SIXTY-FOUR, EIGHTY, EIGHTY-FOUR, and FIVE THOUSAND. The smallest number whose name has all of its letters repeated is THREE TRILLION FOUR HUNDRED FOUR.

The shortest number names with all letters repeated are ONE NONILLION ONE, TWO NONILLION TWO, SIX NONILLION SIX, and TEN NONILLION TEN, each with 15 letters. TWO is the only number name (positive integer) consisting entirely of letters from the second half of the alphabet. No number name is spelled only with letters from the first half of the alphabet. No number name except TWO is spelled with letters from any single row of the typewriter keyboard. No number name is typed only with left-hand, or only with right-hand, letters. The largest number that can be spelled using only the last 18 letters of the alphabet (I through Z) is 66,000,000,000,066,000,066,000,066,000,066. But disallow the letter I, and the largest that can be spelled with just the last 17 (J through Z) drops down to . . . 2.

The following number names use each of the five vowels a, e, i, o, u exactly once: FIVE THOUSAND, SIX THOUSAND TEN, EIGHT THOUSAND, NINE THOUSAND, TEN THOUSAND SIX. The following number names use each of the six vowels a, e, i, o, u, y exactly once: SIX THOUSAND TWENTY, TEN THOUSAND THIRTY, TEN THOUSAND FIFTY, TEN THOUSAND SIXTY, TWENTY THOUSAND SIX, TWENTY-SIX THOUSAND, THIRTY THOUSAND TEN, FIFTY THOUSAND TEN, SIXTY THOUSAND TEN, EIGHTY THOUSAND, NINETY THOUSAND. NINETY-SEVEN is the longest number name with strictly alternating vowels and consonants, unless you count NEGATIVE NINETY-SEVEN.

[Charles Turner] Some words of four or more letters composed solely of letters used in Roman numerals are: DIVIDIVI (a tropical American tree), CIMICIC (a yellow oil), CIMICID (an insect), CIVIC, CIVIL, CIXIID (one of the Cixiidae, a family of insects of order Homoptera), CLIM (dial.

past of climb; in W3), DILL, DILLI (a bag or basket also called dilly bag), DIXID (a type of midge, of the family Dixidae), IDIC (pertaining to or consisting of ids), ILICIC, IMID (variant spelling of imide), IMIDIC (related to an imide), IMMI (unit of measure formerly used in Switzerland = 1.5 l), IMMIX, IXIL (Mayan tribe in central Guatemala), LILL, LIVID, MIDI, MILD, MILL, MIMI (heroine of the opera La Boheme), LLIVILLIVI (a place name in Chile), MIMIC, VILI (a brother of Odin in Norse mythology), VILL, VILLI (plural of villus), VIVID. MIX is the longest English word that is also a valid number in Roman numerals. BACILLICIDIC (destructive to bacilli) and MILLIMILLINARY (correct within a millionth part) have the longest uninterrupted string of Roman numeral letters in a word (10) [Dmitri Borgmann].

ARMADILLIDIIDAE (pill bugs) has a sequence of nine Roman numeral letters. Among words consisting only of Roman numeral letters, the words with the highest total value are MIMIC (2,102) and IMMIX (2,012). If U is allowed in Roman numeral words, there are ILLUVIUM, DILUVIUM (a coarse glacial deposit), MILLILUX (1/1000th of a lux), ILLICIUM (a genus of evergreen trees), and CULICID (mosquito family). In Latin, there are JUDICIUM, DILUCULUM ("dawn" or "daybreak), LIXIVII (genitive of LIXIVIUM), and LILICIDIUM (the slaughter of the lily). Note that in ancient Rome, there were no U and J and these would have been written as V and I. [Pierre Abbat, Bruce D.

Wilner, Dan Tilque, Rudy Wang, Rick Shepherd, Stuart Kidd, Susan Thorpe, Paul Wright, Philip Bennett and Pertti Malo contributed to the Roman numeral section] FABACEAE (a family of beans in some classifications) is the longest word which can also be a hexadecimal numeral (consisting only of A, B, C, D, E, and F). Other hexadecimal words are ACCEDED, BEDFACE (a word used in the building industry), DEFACED, and EFFACED. DEADBEEF in hex is often used in computers to mark an invalid number or address. DEADBEEF is the name of an attack on a public-key cryptographic protocol, consisting of publishing a key with the same key ID as a previously existing key. In PGP and GPG, the key ID is the last few digits of one of its numbers in hex. To demonstrate this attack, someone created a key ending in 0xdeadbeef, so it is called a dead-beef attack.

The hex code "DEADC0DE" (including a zero) also coded as "0xdeadc0de" (0x meaning hex) is sometimes used in programming [Sven Silow, Ted Clarke, Bruce D. Wilner, Pierre Abbat, Mike Geller, Scott McCarter]. FORTY is the only number which has its letters in alphabetical order. FIRST shares this property [Stuart Kidd]. According to Stuart Kidd, ONE is the only number with its letters in reverse alphabetical order. In German, EINS and ACHT are the only numbers with their letters in alphabetical order [Gerd Baron]. GOOGOL is a 1 followed by 100 zeros. Mathematician Edward Kasner supposedly asked his nephew Milton Sirotta to suggest a name for the number, and he came up with this word, which is now found in many dictionaries. The million, billion, trillion, quadrillion system skips over this number. A googolplex is 1 followed by a googol of zeros. According to Pascal Kaeser, in these languages you can count until one million (and more), without using the vowel e: Aymara, Chichewa, Haoussa, Ouigour.

These languages are officially written with the Latin alphabet. In German, EINE MILLION is the first number using the vowel "O" and the first using the consonant "M." EINE QUADRILLION is the first number using the consonant "Q." EINE SEXTILLION is the first number using the consonant "X." EINE SEPTILLION is the first number using the consonant "P." EINE OKTILLION is the first number using the consonant "K." "J" and "Y" seem to appear never in German numbers. (Myriade is not used as a certain number.) [Gerd Baron] [EINE QUADRILLION is 10 24 , like in the old British system, or one septillion in modern/American usage; and analogously with the others.] In German, 22 is ZWEIUNDZWANZIG (with three Z's), 20,020 is ZWANZIGTAUSENDZWANZIG (with four Z's), and 20,022 is ZWANZIGTAUSENDZWEIUNDZWANZIG (five Z's).

[Paul Wright] In Finnish/Suomi, 8 is KAHDEKSIKKOKASI (with 5 K's) or KAHDEKSIKKO (with 4 K's). [Paul Wright] ZENZIZENZIZENZIC (eighth power of a number) has more Z's than any other word in English. The word is in the OED. It was suggested by Robert Recorde, 16th century writer of popular math textbooks, although in his spelling the last letter of the word was k. In a post in sci.math in 1995, Matthew P. Wiener suggested that the longest word in mathematics that is an accepted standard term is RHOMBICOSIDODECAHEDRON. He listed these other long mathematical words of dubious validity: DODECAHEMIDODECAHEDRON, DODECICOSIDODECAHEDRON, ICOSICOSIDODECAHEDRON, ICOSIDODECADODECAHEDRON, PSEUDODIFFERENTIABILITY, QUASIRHOMBICOSIDODECAHEDRON, and SUPERRENORMALIZABILITY.

Some other long words in mathematics are PSEUDORHOMBICUBOCTAHEDRON, RHOMBIDODECADODECAHEDRON, DIRHOMBICOSIDODECAHEDRON, RHOMBITRUNCATED ICOSIDODECAHEDRON, and MEIOCATALECTICIZANT (a word used by James Joseph Sylvester in his Collected Works vol II, page 24, probably coined by him and probably used only by him) [Charles Turner, Jason Douglas, James A. Landau]. LOGARITHM and ALGORITHM are anagrams [Charles Turner]. FOUR has four letters; no other number has this property in English such that the number of letters in the name equals the number. [In fact, according to Brahinsky, each whole number less than 4 is smaller than the number of letters in its name, and each whole number greater than 4 is larger than the number of letters in its name.

The smallest ratio of a number to the number of letters in its name is 1 : 3 (for ONE [3 letters]); the largest such ratio is approximately 3.9x10 64 (for NINE HUNDRED VIGINTILLION [23 letters]).

In other languages, words spelled with a number of letters equal to the number itself are: Afrikaans VIER Chinese (standard Mandarin) I, ER, SAN, SHIH Czech TŘI Diola KUGNEN LI SIBAKI (14) Douala MUTOBA Hawaiian UMIKUMAMALUA (12), UMIKUMAMAKOLU (13) Hungarian NÉGY Japanese NI, SAN (see note), KOKÓNOTSU (9) Khmer PRAIM BEI (8) Lingala ZOMI NA MIBALE' (12) Lithuanian DU, PENKI, SEPTYNÌ Malgache ENINA AMBIN'NY FOLO (16) Manx QUEIG, SHIAGHT Maori KOTAHI TEKAU MA ONO (16) Mongolian ZURGAA Norwegian TO, TRE, FIRE, ÅTTETAL Old English þRÌ Sango BALE'-OKO NA USE' (12) Serbo-Croatian TRI Tagalog APAT, LABING-DALAWA (12; also spelled LABINDALAWA) Tahitian MAHA, HO'E 'AHURU (

10) Tok Pisin TU, TRI Welsh TRI, CHWECH (see note) Wolof FUKK AK JUROOM BENN (16) Zulu ISHUMI NESIHLANU (15), AMASHUMI AMABILI NA MBILI (22) Note - Tahitian.

Ho'e 'ahuru - the apostrophes mark glottal stops, and are considered letters, so this is "ten." Note - Welsh. According to Phil Couch, the word for six "may contain six typed characters but it has only 4 letters. Welsh (more properly Cymraeg) has double character letters CH, DD, FF, NG, LL, PH, RH and TH." Note - Japanese. According to Graan Jenever, if the words are written in Japanese characters in Hiragana, no words meet the rule, although a non-standard way of writing the word for "three" could involve a total of three strokes of the pen. He also writes that if the words are written in Kanji, 1 is the only number to match the rule strictly, although "if you stretch the rule a bit and count the strokes in the character though, one (single horizontal line), two (two horizontal lines) and three (three horizontal lines) will qualify." Note - Yiddish. The above list previously included the Yiddish FIER and FINEF. However, Alain Gottcheiner writes, "Yiddish words for 4 and 5 are spelled FIR and FINF.

In the Polish dialect (Galitsianer), vowels are often diphtonguized (with some complex cases, like VEYE for VER "who ?"), and epenthetic E's abound, giving us FIER and FINEF, but this doesn't appear in writing." In Lithuanian the accusative case of ASTUONI (eight) is ASTUONIS (8 letters). There are also Russian ALL 5,621 [For the above statistics and other Bible statistics he compiled, Bennett included the introductory titles which occur in most of the Psalms and the closing remarks which are found in 13 New Testament books. He did not include titles of each book. Hyphenated words are counted as one word.] Michael Hutching, using the software program Godspeed, found that the word GOD appears exactly 4444 times in the King James version. (Hans Havermann reported a concordance-based word count shows GOD occurring 4447 times.

Philip Bennett resolved the discrepancy when he discovered that in the software search, GOD-WARD, which occurs three times in the KJV, is indexed as a separate word (three times), whereas in the concordance search, GOD-WARD is broken down into two separate words: GOD and WARD. These counts do not include occurrences of gods (244), ungodly (27), godly (15), God's (26) Godliness (15), goddess (5), ungodliness (4), Godhead (3), and Gudgodah (2). The 4447 number includes the word in the title in Psalm 90, "A Prayer of Moses the man of God"; the title does not appear in the Project Gutenberg version.) LORD occurs 7,836 times in the Bible. In addition, LORD'S occurs 134 times, LORDS 42 times, LORDSHIP occurs twice, and LORDLY occurs once [Philip Bennett]. The most commonly occurring name in the Bible is DAVID, which occurs 1,085 times. David's occurs 54 times [Philip Bennett].

The second most commonly occurring name is JESUS, which occurs 973 times. There are an additional 10 occurrences of JESUS'; there is one occurrence of BARJESUS. The third most commonly occurring name is MOSES, which occurs 829 times. Moses' occurs 19 times [Philip Bennett]. [Much of the material for this page was contributed by Philip Bennett.] When Spelled out, Which Numbers Have Their Letters in Alphabetical Order? When Spelled out, Which Numbers Have Their Letters in Alphabetical Order? Forty is the only number that, when spelled out, has its letters in alphabetical order. The word "first" also has its letters in alphabetical order, but "one" has them in reverse alphabetical order. More numerical wordplay: Eighty-eight is the longest number that is typed strictly with alternating hands — if you ignore the hyphen. The word "interchangeability" can be used to form the most spelled-out numbers; you can rearrange it to write the numbers three, eight, nine, ten, thirteen, thirty, thirty-nine, eighty, eighty-nine, ninety and ninety-eight — if you add the hyphen.

Four is the only number that, when spelled out, has the same number of letters as its meaning. Numerical Words Numerical Words There are several interesting observations that can be made about numbers, as spelled out in English words. Here are a few: Eight is the first number alphabetically. Zero is the last. Four is the only number that, spelled out, has as many letters. The only integer names with no repeated letters are zero, one, two, four, five, six, eight, ten, forty, forty-six, sixty, sixty-one, sixty-four, eighty, eighty-four and five thousand. The shortest names for numbers are one, two, six and ten. The longest names for numbers have 758 letters each, and there are 984, 770, 902, 183, 611, 232, 881 (or 344) such numbers.

the smallest of these is 373, 373, 373, 373, 373, 373, 373, 373, 373, 373, 373, 373, 373, 373, 373, 373, 373, 373, 373, 373, 373, 373 and the largest of these is 878, 878, 878, 878, 878, 878, 878, 878, 878, 878, 878, 878, 878, 878, 878, 878, 878, 878, 878, 878, 878, 878. Forty is the only number whose letters are in alphabetical order. One is the only number whose letters are in reverse alphabetical order.

First also has its letters in alphabetical order. The smallest number whose name uses the five vowels a, e, i, o, u in order is 1084 (one thousand eighty-four) The smallest number whose name uses the five vowels a, e, i, o, u in any order is 1005 (one thousand five). The smallest number whose name uses the six vowels a, e, i, o, u, y in order is 1, 000, 000, 000, 008, 020 (one quadrillion eight thousand twenty) The smallest number whose name uses the six vowels a, e, i, o, u, y (in any order) is 1025 (one thousand twenty-five) The largest number whose name uses only one distinct vowel is seventeen (using only e) Eighty-six, nine letters long, is the longest number that is normally typed using strictly alternating hands (ignoring the hyphen). The word interchangeability contains the letters to form more numbers than any other word.

Its letters can form the words three, eight, nine, ten, thirteen, thirty-nine, eighty, eighty-nine, ninety and ninety-eight. Zenzizenzizenzic (eighth power of a number) has more z's than any other word in English. One thousand is the first number that, when spelled out, contains an a. (One hundred and one if you count the 'and'.) One billion is the first number that contains a b. One octillion is the first number that contains a c. One hundred is the first number that contains a d. Zero is the first number that contains an e. Starting from one, it's one. Four is the first number that contains an f. Eight is the first number that contains a g. Three is the first number that contains an h. Five is the first number that contains an i. The letters J and k do not appear in the spelling of any cardinal number. Eleven is the first number that contains an l. One million is the first number that contains an m. One is the first number that contains an n. Zero is the first number that contains an o. starting from one, it's one. One septillion is the first number that contains a p.

One quadrillion is the first number that contains a q. Zero is the first number that contains an r. Starting from one, it's three. Six is the first number that contains an s. Two is the first number that contains a t. Four is the first number that contains a u. Five is the first number that contains a v. Two is the first number that contains a w. Six is the first number that contains an x. Twenty is the first number that contains a y. Zero is the first and only number that contains a z. (One zillion is not a real number.) Seven is the first number not to contain any letter for the first time. One octillion, the first number containing a c, is the largest number to contain any letter for the first time. The first Roman numeral alphabetically is C (100); the last is XXXVIII (38). The first odd Roman nemeral alphabetically is CCCI (301); the last is XXXVII (37). MIX is the longest English word that is also a valid number in Roman numerals. DIVIDIVI (a tropical American tree) is the longest word composed solely of Roman numeral letters.

Some other such words of four or more letters are CIMICIC (a yellow oil), CIMICIC (an insect), CIVIC, CIVIL, CIXIID (one of the Cixiidae, a family of insects of the order Homoptera), DILL, DILLI (a bag or basket also called a dilly bag), DIXID (a type of midge), IDIC (pertaining to or consisting of ids), ILICIC, IMID (variant spelling of imide), IMIDIC (related to an imide), IMMI (unit of measure formerly used in Switzerland = 1.51) IMMIX, IXIL (a Mayan tribe), LIL, LIVID, MIDI, MILD, MILL, MIMI (girl's name), CLIM (dialect word, past tense of climb), MIMIC, VILI (a brother of Odin in Norse mythology), VILL, VILLI (plural of villus) and VIVID. BACILLICIDIC (destructive to bacilli) and MILLIMILLINARY (correct within a millionth part) have the longest uninterrupted string of Roman numeral letters in a word (10).

Among words consisting only of Roman numeral letters, the words with highest total value are MIMIC (2,102) and IMMIX (2,012).

Question: Which is the only written number in English that has all its letters in alphabetical order?
Answer: Forty