googol
/ˈɡuː.ɡəl/
"googol" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“googol” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a numeral. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 6
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The number 10¹⁰⁰, or ten to the power of a hundred. Equivalent to ten duotrigintillion (short scale), or ten sexdecilliard (long scale).
Corpus desk
Index EN-googol · googol · English
googol · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "G" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | googol |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Numeral |
| IPA | /ˈɡuː.ɡəl/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “googol” in English
Rare enough to double-check
googol is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anumeral, transcribed /ˈɡuː.ɡəl/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "The number 10¹⁰⁰, or ten to the power of a hundred. Equivalent to ten duotrigintillion (short scale), or ten sexdecilliard (long scale).".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for googol, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Etymologically, the entry records: Coined by nine-year-old Milton Sirotta in 1920, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, who had asked Milton to think of a name for the 100th power of ten. The word was first published in the book Mathematics and the Imagination (1940). The correct English form is googol, spelled G-O-O-G-O-L.
Definition
- 1The number 10¹⁰⁰, or ten to the power of a hundred. Equivalent to ten duotrigintillion (short scale), or ten sexdecilliard (long scale).
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how googol appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Words of wisdom are spoken by children at least as often as by scientists. The name "googol" was invented by a child (Dr. Kasner's nine-year-old nephew) who was asked to think up a name for a very big number, namely, 1 with a hundred zeros after it. He was very certain that this number was not infinite, and therefore equally certain that it had to have a…
For example, in considering all the finite state grammars that use seven terminal symbols and seven auxiliary symbols (states), [...] he must test over a googol (10^100) candidates.
Etymology
Coined by nine-year-old Milton Sirotta in 1920, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, who had asked Milton to think of a name for the 100th power of ten. The word was first published in the book Mathematics and the Imagination (1940).
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.