"millenia" = 'an indefinite but lengthy period of years'

[Victor Steinbok]

On 5/16/2012 12:47 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> ...
> Or it could be
> just a grammatical error--the Aleppo Codex is dated roughly to the 10th
> century.
> Unlikely? -- I would have expected to see "for *a* millenia" as the
> error for "for a millenium", not the article's "for millenia".

Unlikely? Why? Google gives 150K raw ghits for "a millenia" and,
although some are spurious (e.g., "a millenia long X"), many pair the
two quite happily. But that's just the ones with the article--how many
/don't/ have it? It's hard to tell--sorting through millenia data is
next to impossible--but I don't see it as implausible. Someone may well
recognize the plural without thinking out the meaning.

"Millenium" had been associated with Y2K, so those growing up with it,
might have got the erroneous interpretation from that (even academics
can be wrong about such trivialities).

    VS-)

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