eleventy-seven

[Alice Faber]

On 6/8/10 9:03 PM, George Thompson wrote:
> I've been intending to post this note for these last 5 weeks or so.
>
> A couple of years ago I posted a note on the word "forty-eleven", meaning an uncountably large number.  That post was prompted by a female perp in th 1820s -- a perpette? -- who told the magistrate that she didn't care if he sentenced her to "forty-'leven years".
>
> The broadcasts of the Kentucky Drby and the Preakness both featured inane interviews with celebrities.  I'm so fearfully ignorant of current events that I didn't recognize any of them.  However, one lassie allowed that she had never been to the Derby (or perhaos Preakness), but that her husband had been to "eleventy-seven".
> Is this a familiar variant?  Is it peculiar to her, influenced maybe by the chain of convenience stores?
>

On one non-academic forum I participate in, it's common to use
"eleventy" to mean something like "a whole lot"; "eleventy billion"
would be "really, really, really a whole lot". Given the age of most
participants (I'm old enough for some of them to be my granddaughters),
I assume there's some pop culture foundation for this, but as a linguist
I'm reasonably good at picking up meaning and usage without knowing the
etymology!

--
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Alice Faber                                       faber at haskins.yale.edu
Haskins Laboratories                            tel: (203) 865-6163 x258
New Haven, CT 06511 USA                               fax (203) 865-8963

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