Zenzizenzizenzic

(en.wikipedia.org)

57 points | by gyosifov 2 hours ago

9 comments

  • culi 1 hour ago
    Funny that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenzizenzic

    redirects to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power

    I supposed the 16th power would then be Zenzizenzizenzizenzic and so forth.

  • marceldegraaf 2 hours ago
    Ah, I see someone has listened to "The Rest is Science" recently. Great podcast with Michael Stevens (VSauce) and Hannah Fry (the mathematician)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t-5lQ2mzuw

  • Jblx2 54 minutes ago
    I always wondered what the Spice Girls were singing about in that song.
  • momoraul 1 hour ago
    Just "zenzi" stacked three times. They really committed to the bit.
  • sublinear 2 hours ago
    > dating from a time when powers were written out in words rather than as superscript numbers ... he wrote that it "doeth represent the square of squares squaredly".

    This is a great example of why bad naming conventions are a "smell". It strongly implies that the solution does not yet fully understand the problem it's trying to solve.

  • not_a_bot_4sho 2 hours ago
    Waiting for an AI startup to create a phononym of this, in the same vein as Google did...
  • graypegg 2 hours ago
    > …it survives as a linguistic oddity: zenzizenzizenzic has more Zs than any other word in the OED.

    I am an absolutely garbage scrabble player, but I will be keeping this gem in my back pocket… probably a rare case to play it though haha

    • Sparkle-san 2 hours ago
      Scrabble only comes with one Z, so some of those are gonna have be sideways N's.
      • gjm11 1 hour ago
        Also, a Scrabble board is 15 squares across and ZENZIZENZIZENZIC is 16 letters, so even with a Scrabble set with extra Zs or blanks you couldn't ever play it.
        • dylan604 1 hour ago
          even if you just played the root zenzic would be great score, but again, the solitary z would make a wee bit difficult
    • conradludgate 2 hours ago
      With one Z tile and 2 blanks...
    • darth_aardvark 2 hours ago
      In addition to the Z's everyone else pointed out, Scrabble boards are 15 tiles across. This is 16 letters. You fool. You utter gumdrop.
  • lbo462 2 hours ago
    That is actually pretty cool
  • AStrangeMorrow 2 hours ago
    Someone watched “The rest is Science” I imagine!
    • marcusb 1 hour ago
      Or tried that vocabulary estimator that is currently on the front page (it gave me zenzizenizenic in the last section.)