X upon X
Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2011 3:01 am
I was giving some random ST v 40K thread a quick look when I came across this post:
Is the idiom X upon X supposed to mean X times X ?
I never understood "upon" that way, and I thought it referred to an addition of more or less a similar quantity ended in the same range or one or two orders of magnitude higher, like thousands upon thousands, which I took as many thousands.
Is it normal, here, that a billion upon a billion doesn't translate as something like two billions but quintillions?
A few posts later, he claims the following:Deadguy2001 wrote:
As for the quote you were looking for about the Tyranids.
Here from the old 3E codex.
Taken along with Xenology and some later sources this number would only count Hive ships and Synapse creatures since the lesser beasts like Rippers, Guants, and spore mines are actually manufactured on the spot and then digested after combat is over."A billion upon a billion Tyranids stand at the rim of the galaxy" Page 39.
Or are you referring to the Stark Report which suggested to the High Lords that they draft every able bodied Man, Woman, and Child in the Segmentums Tempestus and Solar into the Imperial Guard/Navy to stop the primary Tyranid fleet?
So, quick question:Deadguy2001 wrote: More importantly does this change the fact that the ST galaxy will be overrun by a quintillion strong swarm of city sized space monsters which could probably go around swallowing Borg cubes with utter impunity?
Is the idiom X upon X supposed to mean X times X ?
I never understood "upon" that way, and I thought it referred to an addition of more or less a similar quantity ended in the same range or one or two orders of magnitude higher, like thousands upon thousands, which I took as many thousands.
Is it normal, here, that a billion upon a billion doesn't translate as something like two billions but quintillions?