Crossword Dictionary
infinite
infinite - a
having no limits or boundaries in time or space or extent or magnitude; "the infinite ingenuity of man"; "infinite wealth"
total and all-embracing; "God's infinite wisdom"
Infinite describes things that are endless, like the universe, or your uncle's corny jokes.
Finite means "relating to something with an end," and when you add the prefix in-, meaning "not," you get infinite: having to do with something that never, ever ends. If someone has read every single book about pyramids, you might say he has an infinite knowledge of ancient Egyptian culture, even though that's an exaggeration. Surely he'll stop talking about them at some point...right?
Since the time of the ancient Greeks, the philosophical nature of infinity was the subject of many discussions among philosophers. In the 17th century, with the introduction of the infinity symbol and the infinitesimal calculus, mathematicians began to work with infinite series and what some mathematicians (including l'Hôpital and Bernoulli) regarded as infinitely small quantities, but infinity continued to be associated with endless processes.