I’m guessing it means 40 greats: “quad” for 4, and “dec” for 10, or four tens, or 40. At about 25 years per generation and 1000 years total, it works out about right.
I understand why it is confusing. I think including the word “great” in there would have been more intuitive, with it indicating how many times you repeat the word “great.”
When I’ve heard people refer to, say, a “double grandfather,” they mean someone who has 2 grandchildren. Does anyone in the real world actually use the term in this way, like maybe in genealogical research?
I thought 14. That should correctly be tetradecuple, while 40 would be tetracontuple.
I think that 14 would put the ten-word first, and then the four-word. It’s also a lot harder to reconcile with the “over a thousand years”: While I don’t doubt that some Heterodynes were still having children into their 70s, I can’t imagine they waited that long to start, so the average generation length would be much shorter.
Tetradecuple is correct. Surely you’ve heard of a dodecahedron before, or perhaps the dodecuple scale. But I agree it’s pretty clear he meant 40 generations.
“VOT KIND UF SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY IZ DIS?”
I dream of the day I become witty enough to write a line like that. But I can assure you that I will steal it for every appropriate occasion in the future.