Recipriversexcluson

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In Douglas Adams's novel Life, the Universe and Everything, a recipriversexcluson is a fictional number whose existence can only be defined as being anything other than itself. For example, if the given time of arrival of a party at a restaurant is a recipriversexcluson, then it is the one moment of time at which it is impossible that any member of the party will arrive. It's one of the principles of the Bistromathic drive, a wonderful new form of space travel without all that dangerous mucking about in improbability.

In Adams's fictional universe, recipriversexclusons play a vital part in many branches of mathematics, including statistics and accountancy, and also form the basic equations used to engineer the Somebody Else's Problem field.