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INFINITE |
When Shakespeare’s Enobarbus said of Cleopatra that “age cannot wither
her, nor custom stale her infinite variety,” he was obviously
exaggerating. So few are the literal uses of “infinite” that almost
every use of it is metaphorical. There is not an infinite number of
possible positions on a chessboard, nor number of stars in the known universe. Things can be innumerable (in
one sense of the word) without being infinite; in other words, things
which are beyond the human capacity to count can still be limited
in number. “Infinite” has its uses as a loose synonym for “a very great
many,” but it is all too often lazily used when one doesn’t want to do
the work to discover the order of magnitude involved. When you are
making quasi-scientific statements you do a disservice to your reader by
implying infinity when mere billions are involved.
