We have talked about "assanka" here before. I had written a limerick on it, and now the OEDILFers are questioning it as a legitimate word because they can only find it in the online Grandiloquent Dictionary. Aput, from the above link, had thought it might be Sanskrit. Any ideas? Should I have it deleted from the system?

The chances of this being a real word are becoming slimmer and slimmer. Here is a link to the site that aput had mentioned. It looks like the real word is vigintillion...which won't be on the OEDILF screen until midway into the 2100s, methinks.

Any idea how assanka came about?

Well, I guess I am the only one interested in this word.

I have found more though! I emailed Tsuwm from WWFTD, and he said this: "well, I didn't think I'd be able to help (and it turns out that I really can't ), but I checked Mrs. B. on the off chance, and she claims: assanka n. one folllowed by sixty-three zeros = one vigintillion (Ceylonese)." He also said that he believes that the online GD, the Luciferous Logolepsy and the Phrontistery all use Mrs. Byrnes as a major source of their material.

Well, then I checked our Mrs. Byrnes. Oy vey! Here is what mine says: asanka (note the spelling difference): n. one, followed by forty-five zeros = one quattuordeceillion.

So...one to the 63rd is out?

While I may be the only one interested in all of this, we have decided to include it in the OEDILF, and Chris Doyle has co-authored it with me. Here it is:

Assanka's a very rare word
Only used by the brainiest nerd.
It's 10 to a power
So big it can tower
To 63 zeros — absurd!

Author's Note: (ah-SAHNK-uh) According to Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary, an assanka is 10^63, or a number that can be expressed as a 1 followed by sixty-three zeros. Its more common name is vigintillion. It is not to be confused with an asanka, another large number equal to 10^45.

Sinhala අ සංඛ්‍යය a saMkhyaya:

http://dsalsrv02.uchicago.edu/...:4787.carter.1003132

අ සංඛ්‍යය, n. lit. the innumerable but used of a definite number, about a vigintillion or the twentieth power of a million.

Darn. I thought Asanka was denatured coffee.

Further looking around this dictionary tells me that අ a is a privative prefix, and සංඛ්‍ය/සංඛ්‍යා saMkhya/saMkhyā is "numerical" so a saMkhyaya literally is "innumerable". And saMkhya is composed of saM "together" and khyā "to tell, number".

I'm guessing all 3 of these elements (a, saM, kyā) are borrowed from Sanskrit since they are pretty much identical to the Sanskrit words. The Sanskrit privative a- is cognate with Greek a- as in "atheist". Sanskrit sam "together" is cognate with Greek homos and English same. Sanskrit khyā is "to tell".

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this dictionary tells me that අ a is a privative prefix, and සංඛ්‍ය/සංඛ්‍යා saMkhya/saMkhyā is

I get gibberish (boxes in a row) for whatever you wrote here.

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I get gibberish

My spouse says that's what she gets when I talk to her.

How does one install Sinhala fonts?

I think newer versions of Windows and Mac OS come with multilingual support preinstalled.

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I think newer versions of Windows and Mac OS come with multilingual support preinstalled.

If it does, Windows 10 is doing an excellent job hidng it.

I know one can go to "typeit.org" and get different alphabets, but that's not the same as having it already loaded. I couldn't find it on my Windows (Named because it's a pane) 7 crotchtop, which is now broken - AGAIN!!! Back to my old XP desktop, which, like me, comes and goes.

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But fortunately I know very little about Windows.

You are fortunate.