Sagan

Definitions

1. A unit of measure denoting a large but unspecified quantity, defined as at least four billion. The term derives from astronomer Carl Sagan and the phrase 'billions and billions' popularly attributed to his television series Cosmos, though he maintained he never actually said it. Hackers use it with mock precision, as in 'the log grew by a sagan of lines overnight', where the humour depends on applying a rigorous-sounding unit to a deliberately vague magnitude. It belongs to the same family of joke units as the microfortnight and the millihelen.