numberwang
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.22 in modern English
18
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Out of the window went the idea that perhaps children are humans with emotions and background and psyche and dream, and instead in rushed labelling and tracking and spreadsheets and monitoring and failure and rapid progress and interventions and scores and you-can-but-you-over-there-can't, and here's a test and here's another one and, oh, here's another one, and all the time in this great big educational Numberwang comes one thing, sneaking in inside the Trojan Horse of accountability: FEAR."
- "Only English (180) and French (55) players have won more than their 29 titles, with more Brazilian players (16) having won the Premier League than Irish (five), Welsh (four), Scottish (four) and Northern Irish (two) put together. That's numberwang!"
- "But there is a partial antidote to this numberwang, and it's context, which locates numbers in our world, the human world. Quite simply, it's what brings them to life, and once they are alive and less abstract, we can make better sense of them."
- "When viewed through a severely skeptical monocle it can look like occult numberwang. At that time, gematria appeared to me to be little more than a form of numerology."
- "Digital Radio Working Group: It must be Numberwang !"
- "So, as you consider the four million must-read insight pieces that come across your desk tomorrow (again perhaps a slight numberwang), consider whether their insights would last as long as Vitruvius or Ehrenberg's advice."
Etymology
number + wang, from a 2006 That Mitchell and Webb Look comedy sketch about a nonsensical game show in which contestants shout random numbers and the host replies "That's Numberwang!"
Usage
- British usage
- Slang
- Uncountable