xkcd #2946: 1.2 Kilofives
xkcd #2946: 1.2 Kilofives
Alt text:
'Oh yeah? Give me 50 milliscore reasons why I should stop.'
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I don't think that that was Lincoln's invention. I think that he was using some archaic European notation that made its way into English.
A lot of languages have some pretty odd ways of speaking numbers.
kagis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigesimal
In several European languages like French and Danish, 20 is used as a base, at least with respect to the linguistic structure of the names of certain numbers (though a thoroughgoing consistent vigesimal system, based on the powers 20, 400, 8000 etc., is not generally used).
"Eighty-seven" in English is "quatre-vingt sept" in French; "four twenties seven", which is basically what he's saying.
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie.
The second one is arguably not vigesimal but instead just an echo of the Germanic way of saying numbers that English has all but lost. You'd be surprised how long things will lurk around the fringes of a language despite not being the most popular way of saying things.
The fact it still makes sense probably helps too.
Could also just be trying to get the right number of syllables for the line. "Four and twenty" is one beat longer than "twenty four."
Maybe I should have left in the aside I had about artistic license.
I don't know the full history, but the usage of "score" to mean twenty was in use since at least the creation of the King James Version of the Bible:
Psalm 90:10: The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.