Thread: Silly question...

...what comes after triskaidenary? Google doesn't come up with a damn thing...this is referring to the numbering system that goes:
primary
secondary
tertiary
quaternary
quinary
senary
septenary
octonary
nonary
denary
...etc.

Stupid question, I know, but it's driving me nuts!

Well if you go by the dictionary, Triskaidenary isn't a real word. vicenary is however in the dictionary, as 20. Denary is also a word for 10. My guess it goes up to ten, then goes by ten. Though its odd to use the words for it, when they could just as easily say 227th or whatever number your trying to reach.

Going beyond tertiary kind of loses its significance anyways. I imagine there'd
be few situations in which one would ever need those terms to discuss
systems. What would you ever need to use nonary for, for instance?

Vigenary?

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/2991 is where I pulled triskaidenary from. Wikipedia mentions that anything after the 10th order starts getting arbitrary...thanks, guys. I'm going with tetrakaidenary, as triskadecagon is the name of a 13-sided figure, and Tetrakaidecagon is the name of a 14-sided figure. I'm assuming that the prefix would more or less match...or that nobody cares by now.

Lock at will.

locke @ OP's request