eleventy-seven

[Garson O'Toole]

There is an influential work that uses "eleventy" as part of a
numerical designator. I do not know if "eleventy" appears in the movie
script.

The Lord of the Rings -  J. R. R. Tolkien
The Fellowship of the Ring
Chapter 1 - A Long-expected Party

When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be
celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special
magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton. …

Bilbo was going to be eleventy-one, 111, a rather curious number, and
a very respectable age for a hobbit (the Old Took himself had only
reached 130); and Frodo was going to be thirty-three, 33, an important
number: the date of his 'coming of age'.

Garson

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 9:19 PM, Alice Faber <faber at haskins.yale.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Alice Faber <faber at HASKINS.YALE.EDU>
> Organization: Haskins Laboratories
> Subject:      Re: eleventy-seven
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
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