Posts Tagged ‘Polygons’
A 9999-sided polygon
What do you call a 9999-sided polygon?
A nonanonacontanonactanonaliagon.
While polygons are important in computer graphics, what’s special about a 9999-gon? Well, not much really, but it made me think about the nomenclature for polygons: the word “polygon” comes from the Greek polygōnon, meaning “many-angled”. Polygons are usually named according to the number of sides, combining a Greek-derived numerical prefix with the suffix -gon, e.g. pentagon (5-gon), dodecagon (12-gon) or icosagon (20-gon) — with the triangle, quadrilateral and nonagon (9-gon) being notable exceptions. But beyond decagons, professional mathematicians generally prefer the numeral notation (n-gon).
Nevertheless, a 10000-gon is called a myriagon.
