What does “ventordici” mean?

Question

I was reading an article today that has the following heading:

Huawei P30 e P30 Pro svelati: ventordici fotocamere, con tanto di zoom 10x (foto)

So what does ventordici means? Just a way to say a ridiculously big number?

@marcanuy: They're both wordplays: just like ventordici is the combination of venti ("twenty") and quattordici ("fourteen"), duemilacredici combines duemilatredici (2013) and credici (literally "believe it", idiomatically "don't count on it") into a fake, unreachable year. E.g. you may see the sentence Half-Life 3 uscirà nel duemilacredici! , which amounts to Half-Life 3 probabilmente non uscirà mai ("Half-Life 3 will likely never come out"). — Vincenzo Oliva, Mar 1, 2019 at 13:50
@VincenzoOliva thanks for the explanation, it was really helpful! You can add it as an answer too — marcanuy, Mar 1, 2019 at 14:26

abarisone · Accepted Answer · 2019-03-01 14:24:36Z

7

As you can read in this semi-serious blog article ventordici is an imaginary number with some strange properties.

Ventordici: numero immaginifico fondamentale del campo complessato.

It is an informal way to describe a huge quantity that cannot be determined, like, for example zillions.

Another similar word we use in Italian is fantastilione that can be translated to bazillion.

As suggested by @VincenzoOliva, another word used with similar meaning is millemila.

answered Feb 28, 2019 at 20:59

abarisone

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