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eleventy

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Etymology

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From eleven +‎ -ty, from Old English hundendleftiġ (also spelled hundendleofantiġ, hundendlyftiġ, and hundælleftiġ). See twelfty for more. Popularized in the 20th century by J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Pronunciation

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Numeral

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eleventy

  1. (informal) 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, pages 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[1], archived from the original on 19 May 2025:
      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.
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Translations

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