In mathematics, the small Veblen ordinal is a certain large countable ordinal, named after Oswald Veblen. It is occasionally called the Ackermann ordinal, though the Ackermann ordinal described by is somewhat smaller than the small Veblen ordinal.

There is no standard notation for ordinals beyond the Feferman–Schütte ordinal, some of which are modifications of the Veblen functions to produce countable ordinals even for uncountable arguments, and some of which are "collapsing functions".

is the limit of ordinals that can be described using a version of Veblen functions with finitely many arguments. It is the ordinal that measures the strength of Kruskal's theorem. It is also the ordinal type of a certain ordering of rooted trees .

using the finitary Veblen function. SVO is the least ordinal which is not the sum of a finite number of values of the finitary Veblen function when applied to functions of finite support from (ordinal exponentiation.

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