Five times less

[Arnold Zwicky]

On May 22, 2009, at 6:32 AM, Bill Palmer wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Bill Palmer <w_a_palmer at BELLSOUTH.NET>
> Subject:      Five times lwss
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>
> In a letter to the editor of the Raleigh News & Observer today, a
> writer
> complains that her salary is "five times less" than that of the city
> manager.  So how does one perform that calculation?
>
> Is this more arithmetic than language?

we had some considerable discussion of the matter here back in the
fall of 2007 (which i can't at the moment examine, because the server
seems to be unavailable).  but there's some discussion here:

AZ, 8/9/08: Recency:
  http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=463

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