i feel the need to make you aware of this cursèd and entirely real wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_hundred
"but gretchen, if six score was a hundred, what did they call five score, aka The Number Previously Known As A Hundred?"

don't worry my friend, this number was known by the extremely logical name of "tenty"
I mean, we still use "dozen", I'm just saying!!

#BringBackTwelfty2k20 https://twitter.com/kylejbritt/status/1277825126529224705
"but wait, if we had a base-12 system, wouldn't we need a word for 144?"

my friend....we already do https://twitter.com/mostlysafe/status/1277825436064665600
lomg humdred is lomg https://twitter.com/fryan_get/status/1277824817186643968
headcanon accepted

or should i say, hundredcanon accepted https://twitter.com/MarissaSkud/status/1277826456500887552
cross-referencing OED & Etymonline, and…maybe?

"Old English had hund endleofantig for "110" and hund twelftig for "120." The -tig formation ran through 12 cycles, and could have bequeathed us numbers *eleventy ("110") and *twelfty ("120") had it endured"
https://twitter.com/leftoblique/status/1277825373846163457
cross-referencing OED & Etymonline, and…maybe?"Old English had hund endleofantig for "110" and hund twelftig for "120." The -tig formation ran through 12 cycles, and could have bequeathed us numbers *eleventy ("110") and *twelfty ("120") had it endured" https://twitter.com/leftoblique/status/1277825373846163457
cross-referencing OED & Etymonline, and…maybe?"Old English had hund endleofantig for "110" and hund twelftig for "120." The -tig formation ran through 12 cycles, and could have bequeathed us numbers *eleventy ("110") and *twelfty ("120") had it endured" https://twitter.com/leftoblique/status/1277825373846163457
numbers are meaningless, time is fake, let's have some base-12, as a treat https://twitter.com/kylejbritt/status/1277826851629666304
yes!! extremely confusing!!! that's why people started distinguishing them by adding "long" and "short"

"I'll have a hundred fish"
*gives 5 score*
"ah, no, i meant a LONG hundred"

they're retronyms, like acoustic guitar and landline phone https://twitter.com/mostlysafe/status/1277827666540978181
petition to distinguish between 100 and 120 by calling them "hundred" and "humdred" https://twitter.com/JanuaryMorris/status/1277831032532762626
I regret only that I encountered Long Hundred after we'd already made this @lingthusiasm episode about Weird Number+Language Stuff, because it woulda been PERFECT https://twitter.com/lingthusiasm/status/1258568236460920834
Ah, it sounds like folks probably also want the link to the Wikipedia article about finger-counting gestures
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger-counting https://twitter.com/aelleaelle/status/1277830098415226880
"yes I know you agreed to pay me $500 but I actually put in the contract that I was to be paid in long hundreds" https://twitter.com/easternblot/status/1277835288610570240
okay but what about...a counting system COMBINING yan tan tethera and long hundreds https://twitter.com/RHendery/status/1277838940716756992
yanty, tanty, tetherty https://twitter.com/RHendery/status/1277839991125585920
where are the speakers of the other germanic languages, surely they must be waking up by now

i just want to know if the following are more or less cursed than twelfty:

zwölfzig
twaalftig
tolvti
tólftíu
tolve
tolvtio
tolvetich https://twitter.com/sdvrie/status/1277846149559463936
I thought quatre-vingt dix had prepared me....I was not prepared https://twitter.com/M__Verbruggen/status/1277836652803772417
do....do i want to know how many kinds of dozen there are in germany https://twitter.com/FranzSauerstein/status/1277854985573761024
i'm kinda sad we didn't use this as an excuse to develop "long billion" and "short billion" https://twitter.com/jfruh/status/1277833142972248065
EXCELLENT https://twitter.com/danielzklein/status/1277856336491851776
oh no some sort of lifestyle magazine is going to make this the new hygge aren't they https://twitter.com/M__Verbruggen/status/1277856646543421441
I see @RHendery's favourite wool-counting numbers upthread and raise her...egg-counting numbers https://twitter.com/FranzSauerstein/status/1277857896605331456
sometimes I hate being right https://twitter.com/M__Verbruggen/status/1277859679297773568
you know what, as long as it always refers to the SAME quantity of sable pelts, i'm fine with it https://twitter.com/TaupeTrope/status/1277860157033074689
wait drölf is adorable

(context for non-German speakers, that's a portmanteau of drei 3 and zwölf 12, I guess the English equivalent would be threlve) https://twitter.com/FranzSauerstein/status/1277860165262487552
whereas now, I for one just use "metric" in this context as an intensifier, short for metric fuckton

(proof from BECAUSE INTERNET)
https://twitter.com/linguistlaura/status/1277873057084907525
everyone is! language is an open-source project and you are contributing to it all the time! https://twitter.com/JanuaryMorris/status/1277835070129295360
I love this! can we revive joint-counting! https://twitter.com/sigmastarstate/status/1277936020449832960
alright the new umpteen is threlfty, pass it on https://twitter.com/towo/status/1277863111106727936
fifty-eleven is also extremely good

(and, I suspect, may also once have been a real number) https://twitter.com/bananders/status/1277868950001508357
Yup, I definitely encountered the vigesimal system in my youth learning a bit of Scottish Gaelic as well https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fichead#:~:text=In%20the%20older%2C%20vigesimal%20system,%5Btimes%5D%20twenty%20books%E2%80%9D https://twitter.com/MkGiles/status/1277872519144525824
it has taken me several minutes of sitting here and puzzling at it to work these out, it's like counting in sudoku https://twitter.com/tortipede/status/1277923588927041538
I love how people are telling me that drölf is both grandma slang and teen/internet slang https://twitter.com/lookeastwards/status/1278007173084319744
Chinese: I see your long and short, and raise you...four systems!
https://twitter.com/acidflask/status/1278022050871984129
Petition to rename them "long gigabytes" "long terabytes" etc https://twitter.com/rinaarts/status/1277857988997455878
If you like learning weird things about the interface of language and numbers, may I suggest this episode of my podcast @lingthusiasm, about why we measure time in seconds (but not thirds!) and more

Literal soundcloud link, also in all the podcast apps: https://soundcloud.com/lingthusiasm/15-talking-and-thinking-about-time
15: Talking and thinking about time - Lingthusiasm

https://soundcloud.com/lingthusiasm/15-talking-and-thinking-about-time
You can follow @GretchenAMcC.
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