eleventy-seven

[Dan Goncharoff]

The script is available online, and includes "eleventy".
DanG

On 6/8/2010 11:13 PM, Garson O'Toole wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole<adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: eleventy-seven
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>
> 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!
>>
>> --
>> ========================================================================
>> 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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