Why the oddity of speculative/non-specified large numbers

Solution 1:

In English, we have perhaps a score of special words used to describe certain Imperial numbers. Most of these come from historically important units of measure. There's at least a couple words that mean 2. A common reason is the symmetry of the human body, and the need to describe our pair of legs, among other matched body parts.

Of course, we can't forget about commerce. Approximately a half-dozen words come to us because those numbers showed up regularly, especially in British Commerce. For example, we used to have twelve pennies to a shilling, and twenty shillings to a pound.

Also, it was common for goods to be ordered in quantities of twelve. Twelve is easily dividable by 2, 3, and 4, so it was easier to break things up. However, bakers didn't want to be caught shorting their customers, so they threw an extra loaf into an order of 12.

While there's at least a gross of words that describe all the power-of-ten numbers, I think it's a shame that we don't have more Imperial number words. Powers of twelve do have a lot going for them; they're just very obnoxious in a base-10 system.

If we put our heads together, we might even be able to come up with great gross of words, and show those new fangled mathematicians a thing or two about using language to talk about numbers.

http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/numbers/words/intro.htm