Beware today! Yes, the Ides of March are upon us. The term "the ides" of something has really fallen out of favor. Does it just mean 15? If so, I'm using it from now on. "I get paid on the 1st and the ides of each month," etc. But beyond date stuff, I can use it for everything. "Yeah, he's in 10th grade, so he must be ides or 16 by now." I like it. Before I get too carried away though, let's check in with our good friends over at wikipedia.org:
"Ides may refer to: A day in the Roman calendar, that marked the approximate middle of the month, i.e., the fifteenth day in the months of March, May, July,
and October, and the thirteenth day in the other eight months. The word ides comes from Latin, meaning "half division" (of a month)."
"Ides may refer to: A day in the Roman calendar, that marked the approximate middle of the month, i.e., the fifteenth day in the months of March, May, July,
and October, and the thirteenth day in the other eight months. The word ides comes from Latin, meaning "half division" (of a month)."
Wait a second, not only does it not mean "fifteen," but it also makes zero sense. Let me see if I'm grasping this correctly: some of the months that have 31 days use 15 as their approximate middle. Ok, that makes sense. The other months, whether they have 31, 30, or 28 days use 13 as their approximate middle. Bullshit. 15 is the exact middle of 4 months, yet their ides is 13. I'm not happy about this un-unified ides crap, and if there were somewhere I could write
a complaint letter, it would already be on its way.
You see, this is typical. I say something trivial, get intrigued and look for more information,
then end up getting mad. Maybe I should just base things on limited, possibly incorrect information. That's always worked for people in the past, right?
This totally isn't where I thought today's post was going, but my tangent has led me to other places this morning. The world of terms for numbers. We all use terms like "dozen" with great frequency. In fact, it's popular enough that it has two spinoffs: "half-dozen" and "baker's dozen." Could bakers just not count well or were they being generous and tossing in a free cookie or
bagel? Maybe bakers introduced the concept of coupons to the world, with their whole "buy 12 get 1 free" shtick. I could look that up, but I'm finally getting less pissed off.
Other terms are known but not in most of our everyday vocabulary. The next most popular that comes to the top of my head owes its fame to Honest Abe. Yep, I'm talking about a "score" of something. It's just a cool way of saying "twenty," and I think we need to bring it back. I remember first realizing that Lincoln was unnecessarily making people do math in the Gettysburg Address, and imagining the crowd missing the next couple of lines of the famous
speech because they were busy thinking, "Ok, so a score is 20. He said four of those, so that gives us 80. And seven, right? So that makes 87 years ago. What did he say our fathers did then? I missed it; I was doing math. That's ok, the world will little note nor long remember what was said here anyway."
Next on my short list is "fathom." It means "six feet," and I'm absolutely shocked that I haven't been using this term frequently. Why? Because I'm a fathom tall when wearing shoes, and just a smidge under a fathom without. A "smidge" means "half an inch" from this point forward. Sure, they probably still use it a bunch in some field like ocean-mapping or something, but we need to bring that one back. "Hey, wanna join a Fathom and Under basketball league this fall?" Hell yes I do. "I just bought season one of 'Fathom Under' and it's really compelling!" Oh yeah, it's on.
a complaint letter, it would already be on its way.
You see, this is typical. I say something trivial, get intrigued and look for more information,
then end up getting mad. Maybe I should just base things on limited, possibly incorrect information. That's always worked for people in the past, right?
This totally isn't where I thought today's post was going, but my tangent has led me to other places this morning. The world of terms for numbers. We all use terms like "dozen" with great frequency. In fact, it's popular enough that it has two spinoffs: "half-dozen" and "baker's dozen." Could bakers just not count well or were they being generous and tossing in a free cookie or
bagel? Maybe bakers introduced the concept of coupons to the world, with their whole "buy 12 get 1 free" shtick. I could look that up, but I'm finally getting less pissed off.
Other terms are known but not in most of our everyday vocabulary. The next most popular that comes to the top of my head owes its fame to Honest Abe. Yep, I'm talking about a "score" of something. It's just a cool way of saying "twenty," and I think we need to bring it back. I remember first realizing that Lincoln was unnecessarily making people do math in the Gettysburg Address, and imagining the crowd missing the next couple of lines of the famous
speech because they were busy thinking, "Ok, so a score is 20. He said four of those, so that gives us 80. And seven, right? So that makes 87 years ago. What did he say our fathers did then? I missed it; I was doing math. That's ok, the world will little note nor long remember what was said here anyway."
Next on my short list is "fathom." It means "six feet," and I'm absolutely shocked that I haven't been using this term frequently. Why? Because I'm a fathom tall when wearing shoes, and just a smidge under a fathom without. A "smidge" means "half an inch" from this point forward. Sure, they probably still use it a bunch in some field like ocean-mapping or something, but we need to bring that one back. "Hey, wanna join a Fathom and Under basketball league this fall?" Hell yes I do. "I just bought season one of 'Fathom Under' and it's really compelling!" Oh yeah, it's on.
The last major one I can think of right now is a "gross" of something. This seems pretty arbitrary to me, and I don't want to spend the time finding out why it's not. Basically, it means 144. How often can that possibly come up? I'm sure for some reason some products are ordered in grosses, but I rarely come across that specific number in my everyday life. In fact, as far as I know, my wife might use "gross" 100% of the time she refers to 144, but I still wouldn't know because it just doesn't come up. It's too bad too, because I'd like to use that term. Maybe I'll start going out of my way to use it when I normally would've said 150. That doesn't come up often either, but I won't miss the extra 6 of whatever I'm talking about.
What other terms am I missing, gentle readers? I know "fortnight" is two weeks, and that's pretty cool. Being short for "fourteen nights" though, it's almost too sensible for me to use. It would be cool though to tell someone that "We're pretty busy for the next fortnight, but maybe that following Saturday would work." Hmmmm. I know I'm missing some, so help me out.
I also want to make up some new ones. I think that'll be fun, and we can start a grass roots campaign right here to get it into the public consciousness. Email me at ptklein@gmail.com with suggestions for new terms or numbers that need terms, and I'll try to have a post about them sometime soon (hopefully within the next fortnight or score of days).
Have a great day, everyone, and tomorrow's FUF is still wide open, so email away.
5 comments:
Ah, a gross. I have only come upon it once in general use, and that was when we were ordering kepot for our wedding. They were often sold as a gross, which I had to look up because I didn't know what number it was referring to. Maybe people use a gross because a dozen is so popular, and a gross is a dozen squared. But there's your answer as to whether or not I use the term whenever referring to 144. I usually just use the number, but if pressed to be more creative in my explanation, I'd go with 12 squared. Aren't you glad you raised the issue?
How about a ream? That actually could be a pretty disgusting question uttered at a bar. But as you know, a ream is approximately 480-516 sheets of paper. Why the range? And a ream is 20 quires which is either 24 or 25 sheets. A furlong is 1/8 of a mile. A rod is 5 1/2 yards. A yard is 3 feet.
Then to make matters worse, most of these words that relate to numbers have more than one meaning. Score, fathom, gross, ream, rod, yard, foot. What's up with that? I have to admit that your blog has made me question our language and the words we use on a daily basis. Thanks.
Baker's Dozen has a pretty interesting etymology actually: apparently it was a punishable offense to shortchange a customer with baked goods, so to avoid giving a mere 11 of something, bakers would make 13 just to be sure they wouldn't get their hand chopped off. No joke. That Henry III did not mess around.
Paul,
That's awesome. "Ream" is exactly what I was looking for. And I never knew about "quire," so you've opened my eyes quite a bit. A rod is 5.5 yards? So it's also 16.5 feet (or 198 inches) then. Wow, we really have a strange language. A stranguage, if you will. I certainly will.
Amber, thanks for letting me know how you refer to numbers. I feel like we can tell each other anything.
BKS, I'm actually glad to now know that story. I wonder what other terms were coined by people fearing their hands would be chopped off. Besides "Ok, ok, I'll tell you, just put the knife down!"
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