Five times less

[Wilson Gray]

I don't have a problem with the fact that, before I retired, my salary
was _two times less_ than that of my wife, as opposed to "my wife's
salary was _two times more_  than mine," but I agree with everyone
else, otherwise.

A value 200% less than nothing? <har! har!>

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain





On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 10:26 AM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Five times less
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On May 22, 2009, at 6:32 AM, Bill Palmer wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Bill Palmer <w_a_palmer at BELLSOUTH.NET>
>> Subject: Â  Â  Â Five times lwss
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> 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. Â 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). Â but there's some discussion here:
>
> AZ, 8/9/08: Recency:
> Â http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=463
>
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