uncountably

English

Etymology

uncountable + -ly or un- + countably

Adverb

uncountably (not comparable)

  1. Too many to be counted (either by reason of being infinite or for practical constraints).
    The stars in the sky are uncountably many. Even a lifetime would not suffice to number them all.
    • 1988 July 6, “Systems Easily Tripped in Error Bring Death in a Lake, Warning Us of...”, in Los Angeles Times:
      And the dimensions of death that can result from such systems tripped in error, or through misperceptions of reality, are uncountably greater than those
    • 1990 September 20, “Unplugging A Diverse Bit Of Cable TV”, in New York Times:
      a host of other producers fear that a vital link to New York's uncountably diverse populations is about to be cut.
    • 1997 December 29, “Vapors And Serenity”, in Newsweek:
      And the memory of man runneth not to a year when there was an episode of disproportion comparable to the planet-wide vapors occasioned by one of the year's uncountably numerous automobile accidents, this one in Paris.
    • 2006, Geoffrey Hawthorn, edited by David R. Olson and Michael Cole, Technology, Literacy and the Evolution of Society, Orality in Politics, page 185:
      and the sheer quantity of material is uncountably greater
    • 2007 January 17, “Hippie and redneck show is equal parts insane, inane”, in Boston Globe:
      Stories of road travel in the United States have taken uncountably many forms, from John Steinbeck's "Travels With Charley" and Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" to "Little Miss Sunshine".
  2. (grammar) In an uncountable fashion.
    Some nouns can be used both countably and uncountably.
  3. (mathematics) In a way that is incapable of being put into one-to-one correspondence with the natural numbers or any subset thereof.
    • 2004, Jayant V. Deshpande, Mathematical Analysis And Applications: An Introduction, page 55:
      If a set is neither finite nor countably infinite, it is said to be uncountably infinite or simply uncountable.

Translations

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