An army or a dozen

[LanDi Liu]

Oh!  Just as I sent that, I remembered a construction like that (which I
guess was sitting in the back of my brain making me feel that this wasn't an
isolated example)!  It's from Lenny Kravitz's "Fly Away" (1998): "the Milky
Way, or even Mars".  Others?

On Feb 7, 2008 5:03 PM, LanDi Liu <strangeguitars at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       LanDi Liu <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      An army or a dozen
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> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From The Wizard of Oz:
> "The Lion declared he was afraid of nothing on earth, and would gladly
> face
> an army or a dozen of the fierce Kalidahs."*
>
> In the above sentence, would you read this to be 'an army of the Kalidahs,
> or a dozen of the Kalidahs', or 'an army of men, or a dozen of the fierce
> Kalidahs."?
>
> I think it's very unnatural to put the greater before the lesser in this
> kind of a context.  But it may be that the Kalidahs were being thought of
> here as being even more powerful than an army.  Does anyone here have (or
> can think of) any examples of putting the greater before the lesser?  Or
> does anyone think it is (or once was) normal to do this?
>
> *Kalidahs are huge animals with bodies like bears and heads like tigers.
>
> --
> Randy Alexander
> Jilin City, China
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China

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