Expressions with Number Variation

[Victor Steinbok]

Well, the original snowclone is a gift that keeps on giving. I just so
two more yesterday--with 88 and 3000 as the respective numbers.
Obviously, at least one of them was "proverbial".

The "This and [X amount] will/won't buy you a cup of coffee/get you on
the subway" has significant numerical variations. "Xth Circle of Hell"
has some variability, although the tendency is to maximize the damage.

On the other hand, "take two of these and call me in the morning" is
relatively stable, even in snowclone expressions.

     VS-)

On 9/13/2012 5:00 PM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
> In connection with the discovery that the original formulation of "the whole nine yards" may well have been "the whole six yards," Dave Wilton has pointed out that "there are many examples of phrases with numbers that went through multiple versions with different numerical values before settling on the one that became canonical (e.g., 'cloud nine')."  Can Dave or anyone else give me other examples of this kind of number variation?
>
> Fred Shapiro

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