infinite

Pluralinfinites

1. 1
   adjective

   Having no limits or end, or too many to be counted.

   Some cosmologists argue that space is infinite, with no edge anywhere.

   Many believers describe God's mercy as infinite.

   Similarendless, boundless, limitless, unlimited, unending

   Oppositefinite, limited, bounded

   Note

   The strict meaning, the one the word's parts promise: no end and no limit at all. It reached Middle English through Old French and displaced a native Old English word for the same idea, unġeendodlīċ. Of God it is meant literally, as in the King James Bible of 1611: "his understanding is infinite." Boundless, endless and limitless are its nearest plain-English partners.

2. 2
   adjective

   So large or so great that it seems beyond measuring or counting.

   The museum's new owner had seemingly infinite wealth and spent it freely.

   Restoring the torn manuscript demanded infinite patience.

   Similarvast, immeasurable, inestimable

   Oppositelimited, finite

   Note

   Latin īnfīnītus meant "without end", from in-, "not", and fīnis, "end", but here the word exaggerates rather than measures. It usually sits before an abstract noun, as in Marlowe's infinite riches in a little room or Milton's infinite calamity. Because it means only "immense", it grades like any adjective of size: Florio's Montaigne writes so infinite, and more infinite and most infinite are both in use.

3. 3
   adjective

   Used with a plural noun to mean infinitely many, without any limit in number.

   Given infinite chances, even a hopeless player would eventually win.

   Two mirrors facing each other produce infinite reflections.

   Similarcountless, innumerable, untold, uncountable, numberless

   Oppositefinite, limited

   Note

   Before a plural noun the word counts rather than measures: infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters, in the thought experiment credited to Huxley, means monkeys and typewriters without number, enough that one of them eventually types a masterpiece. Countless is the everyday synonym, and infinitely many or an infinite number of are the longer ways to say the same thing.

4. 4
   adjective

   In mathematics, larger than every positive quantity or magnitude, and so without any limit.

   The integral diverges, so the area under the curve is infinite.

   In this model the resistance becomes infinite when the switch is open.

   Oppositefinite

   Note

   Mathematics uses the word strictly: an infinite quantity is not merely very large, because no number, however big, ever reaches it. Calculus handles it through limits, saying that a sum or an area grows without bound, and the symbol ∞ stands for the result. The opposite is finite, not small, and the looser sense of something immense has no place here.

5. 5
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Something whose nature is to be infinite, without limit or end.

   Mystics often describe a longing to touch the infinite.

   Medieval philosophers argued over whether two infinites could ever be compared.

   Similarinfinity

   Oppositefinite

   Note

   As a noun the word lives in two settings. With the, it names whatever is boundless, often in poetry: Tennyson's The Lover's Tale says Earth would sooner go round Heaven than language grasp the infinite of Love. In the history of mathematics and philosophy it becomes countable, and thinkers ask whether two infinites can be equal; Hobbes, cautiously, would say only that they were not unequal.

6. 6
   adjective

   Of a set, containing infinitely many elements rather than a finite number of them.

   Euclid's argument shows that the set of prime numbers is infinite.

   An infinite set of points can fit inside a segment only one inch long.

   Oppositefinite

   Note

   Sets without end come in different sizes. The whole numbers can be listed one after another forever, so they are countably infinite; the real numbers cannot be listed at all, so they are uncountable. Every infinite set can also be matched one-to-one with part of itself, as the natural numbers can with their squares, something no finite set can do.

7. 7
   adjective

   In grammar, not restricted to a particular person or number.

   In 'She wants to leave,' the verb 'leave' is infinite, while 'wants' agrees with its subject.

   Infinite verb forms look the same whatever the subject, so 'to be' never becomes 'to is.'

   Similarnonfinite

   Oppositefinite

   Note

   The grammarian's contrast is with the finite verb, which changes to agree with its subject: wants beside want, is beside are. The infinitive and the participles sit on the other side of that line, and the infinitive takes its name from the same idea. Most modern grammars say non-finite instead, so infinite in this sense now reads as older terminology.

8. 8
   adjective

   Of a canon, able to repeat endlessly because its end leads back into its beginning.

   The composer closed the suite with an infinite canon whose last bar flows straight back into the first.

   Because the round is infinite, the singers must agree in advance on when to stop.

   Similarperpetual

   Oppositefinite

   Note

   A canon is built from one melody taken up by voices that enter one after another; in the infinite kind, also called a perpetual fugue, the last bar is written to lead straight back into the first. Its counterpart, the finite canon, closes with a written ending, so there the score itself says where the music stops.

9. 9
   nouncountable

   In video games, a combo that can be repeated over and over without interruption.

   Players found an infinite in the corner that kept opponents trapped until they lost.

   The developers patched out both infinites within a week of release.

   Note

   Fighting-game players treat an infinite as a flaw in the design rather than a feat of skill: once it starts, the opponent can do nothing, so a single discovery can decide every match. Designers build in limits against it, and Adam Deats and Joe Epstein's Virtua Fighter 5 (2007) names infinites beside overpowered combos as what the system prevents.

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