forty-eleven

[sagehen]

>        "Forty-eleven" is an impossible number, therefore an impossibly big
>number.  It seems to me that I first encountered the expression in a
>blues song, very many years ago; in any event, I have had the notion
>that it was an expression used by black people.  Which indeed it seems
>to be, but the second item below is from a story by no doubt a white
>author, and the character who speaks is no doubt white.
>        I don't see it in tbe OED or HDAS; didn't check DARE.
>        It has a long history, since my first cite is from the 1830s and my
>last, a variant, from a play written in the 1980s or 90s, though set in
>the 1960s.
>
>        [Cornelia Latting, a young colored woman, sentenced to 2 years, 6
>months; she tells the court] that she did not care a d--n if they had
>sent her up for forty-eleven years.
>        New York Transcript, February 15, 1836, p. 2, col. 4
>
>        I never go into one [a toy store] without wishiní it was Christmas
>once
>a week, and I had forty-eleven children to buy toys for.
>        S. Annie Frost, ìThe Daffodils Prepare fot a Fancy Fair,î Godeyís
>Ladyís Book, July, 1866, p. 52, col. 2  (Proquest's Amer Periodicals)
>
>        [He will] go back to London and join the forty eleven colored actors
>who are now located and settled down in amalgamation row never to return
>to America.
>        Chicago Defender, June 17, 1911, p. 1, col. ?  (Proquest's Chicago
>Defender)
>
>        Well, I don't even care/ If my baby leaves me flat/ I got forty 'leven
>others/ If it comes to that.
>        Josh White, "Evil-hearted Me", in The Josh White Song Book, Chicago:
>Quadrangle books, 1963, p. 51.  White says he learned the song from
>Blind Blake, who was recording in the 1920s.  "Forty-eleven" doesn't
>appear in Michael Taft's Blues Concordance (http://dylan61.se/taft.htm)
>nor does he include "Evil-hearted Me".  It appears that White recorded
>it in 1944.
>
>        They was out there pouring whiskey on the grave... had two five-gallon
>buckets full of dice and fifty-eleven decks of cards they dumped in the
>grave with him.
>        August Wilson, Two Trains Running.  Act 2, scene 2.  I saw a
>performance o this play a few weeks ago, and caught this expression on
>the fly.  I quote it here from the recent database of Afro-American
>plays, the title of which I forget.
>        The second and third items above I found by searching Proquest's
>Historical Newspapers for "forty-eleven".  Until I heard Wilson's play I
>hadn't realized that there were variant formulas and I haven't searched
>for other base numbers.
>
>GAT
 ~~~~~~~~~
My mother-in-law (white, b. 1902, childhood & youth spent in Washington  &
Alaska) used this word, but her version was "forty-leven."   I'd guess that
she picked it up in Alaska, but  since the population there came from
everywhere that doesn't help much!
AM

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