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An Alpo-esque type ?


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So this morning in the pre-dawn darkness, I get a call from nature and stagger half asleep to the bathroom, do my business, then waddle a little more awake back to my bed; but before my head hits the pillow a song pops into it. This has been happening a lot lately - usually Christmas carols which is really annoying and means I am not likely to get back to sleep. Today the song was The Twelveth of Never by Johnny Mathis I think. First off I got to contemplating how difficult it is to say that number. Easy to say eleventh or thirteenth but getting that v pronounced and saying the th not as a f is hard. Then I progressed on to more important number issues - why do we say first, second, third but thereafter go to saying the number with a th after it like 4th, oops fifth is close but not exact then back to 6th, 7th and so on up to 10th.  Then we have eleven not oneteenth or even firstteenth, same with twelve not twoteenth or secondteenth - I could go on but you get the idea. Where did this numbering nomenclature come from ? Was it just because saying it the other possible ways sounded stupid? Oh, and think about how it seemingly gets violated when you get to the hundreds! The one hundred and first airborn could have been the one hundredth and oneth or the first hundred and oneth but then I guess nobody would have joined those units cause it sounded goofy. I know I need help -some kind of therapy is probably called for but what do I call it? Am I an alpoholic?

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Charlie,

     Being or thinking sometimes like someone is one thing, but by definition "-holic" is a suffix forming nouns, indicating a person having an abnormal desire for or dependence on. :o

      More appropriate would be "alpooid", with "-oid" being a suffix meaning "resembling" or "like", but often implying an incomplete or imperfect resemblance to what is indicated by the preceding element. ;)

      In layman terms, we can be like Alpo, but will never be Alpo:blink:

 

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Numbers got their suffixes and descriptors by a bunch of military guys on a bender in the days of King James. They were having a conversation about the number of drinks they had and the names of the numbers came naturally to them after a number of drinks. A Scribe for the King happened to be there and he documented the conversation  to take it to the King's Mathematicians. You see the King sounded completely silly when speaking about numbers. For instance the King pronounced the number twelve normally but when describing the twelfth item in a set of a dozen or saying someone was "twelfth" in line he would say someone " was the One-two-eth" in  line. For Thirteen he would say the One-Three-eth". Well, this wouldn't do because it made the King look stupid so the Scribe took the drunken ramblings that he had written to the Mathematicians and they in turn presented the idea to the King who liked it very much and that is how we ended up with the  "St's and  Th's" at the ends of numbers.

 

 

I hope this helps.

 

 

 

 

Pat (What's pulling your leg) Riot ;)

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11 minutes ago, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

I think Alpo has even said one halfth, one quarterth 

 

Only after downing a image.png.116f3c1212cb0d7784ce1577106d45d7.png maybe? :P

 

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I sure hope the rest of your day went better.

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52 minutes ago, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

I think Alpo has even said one halfth, one quarterth 

That was back when I was a callow ute - one tooth, one threeth century, maybe.

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