sagan
/ˈseɪɡən/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.98 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
A surname.
name
A village in Sardasht Rural District, in the Central District of Bashagard County, Hormozgan Province, Iran.
name
Alternative form of Sakan (village in West Azerbaijan, Iran).
noun
Alternative letter-case form of Sagan.
Example Sentences
- "Today, there is a well-known joke unit of measurement called a Sagan. a Sagan is four billion—the smallest number that could fit the description "billions and billions.""
- "I had resolved to pass along the eastern shore of Lake Ganjule, in order to solve the problem of the sources of the river Sagan, the largest affluent of Lake Stefanie, which was supposed to flow out of Lake Ganjule. This I found to be not the case. The sources of the Sagan lie east of the south end of Lake Abaya. But there is a broad channel connecting Lake Ganjule with the Sagan."
- "Part of it was that I just couldn't deal with a piece of primal matter floating around for sagans of years, eroding away until it became a nice, shiny, sharp-as-William-F.-Buckley's-tongue sword, with the old familiar "S" symbol coincidentally engraved on its hilt."
- ""There must be a sagan of them up there.""
- "There are sagans of other planets crying out for this knowledge."
- "The Jet and xBase database engines have been pounded on by who knows how many developers and end-users for years, which amounts to sagans and sagans of hours of real-world testing!"
Etymology
The unit is derived from the phrase "billions and billions (of stars)", erroneously attributed to the American astronomer Carl Sagan. The lower bound of such a number must be two billion plus two billion, or four billion. Johnny Carson popularized the phrase through his occasional impersonation of Sagan throughout his career.
Usage
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
Frequently Paired Words
Segan