"A hundred"

[poosticks7]

I always liked the use of score in Tolkien's writing. There is something very evocative about 'three score and ten, rather than seventy.

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I wonder if using "hundred" as a more vague measurement than as an exact one was in any way influenced by the Hundred Years War, which was actually 117 years long, rather than exactly 100 years long?

[Terisonen]

And what about thousand and one nights?

[zedturtle]

Going on a slight tangent, in Chinese "one thousand" is used to mean infinity, or at least a very very large number. That's why Mao propaganda when he was alive said he would live 1000 years.

It was also the source of some of the confusion in Marco Polo's accounts of China. He said for example that there were a thousand bridges in Hangzhou. Anyone going there today would be hard pressed to find so many or even understand how so many bridges could exist, let alone in the 13th century. It is now believed that Polo's self-tought grasp of Chinese made him miss some of the language subtlety and take the 1000 number literally.

Interesting. I’ve used ‘a thousand thousand’ to mean ‘a very large indeterminate number’ before and it seems common enough parlance to use ‘a million’ in daily life to mean the same thing.

Which also makes me wonder at the fact that the real number used to mean ‘a lot’ keeps increasing. I guess that’s explainable as I’ve got several billion bytes of storage loose in my pocket right now.

[zedturtle]

And what about thousand and one nights?

Ooh. I was just thinking about that the other night. Since it’s not literally that many stories, just enough for him to fall in love.

[cuthalion]

I can't believe the discussion here has been so sensible and stayed on point for so long--surely the only real take away from Jon's elaborate-ruse-of-a-post, in which he uses lines copied from LoTR arranged in such a way as to to compose an Elizabethan-style coded poem, is the following 'announcement':

sturdy hobbits . . .. There must be . . . Before long . . . next Spring . . . Gondor !!

If only you lot payed attention more!

Thanks Jon

[cuthalion]

Admittedly, following the same formula, the rest reads:

though . . . even for Hobbits . . . a hundred hot snakes . . . can still surprise you . . . . wait about seventy-seven years . . . or . . . about a hundred . . . hundred . . . hundred . . . hundred . . . hundred years hence.

. . . Still--here's hoping!

[Jon Hodgson]

I can't believe the discussion here has been so sensible and stayed on point for so long--surely the only real take away from Jon's elaborate-ruse-of-a-post, in which he uses lines copied from LoTR arranged in such a way as to to compose an Elizabethan-style coded poem, is the following 'announcement':

sturdy hobbits . . .. There must be . . . Before long . . . next Spring . . . Gondor !!

If only you lot payed attention more!

Thanks Jon

HOLY GUACAMOLE

[Falenthal]

I can't believe the discussion here has been so sensible and stayed on point for so long--surely the only real take away from Jon's elaborate-ruse-of-a-post, in which he uses lines copied from LoTR arranged in such a way as to to compose an Elizabethan-style coded poem, is the following 'announcement':

sturdy hobbits . . .. There must be . . . Before long . . . next Spring . . . Gondor !!

If only you lot payed attention more!

Thanks Jon

I'm going to read the OP backwards right now, while listening to Stairway to Heaven at 33RPMs...

[Earendil]

I can't believe the discussion here has been so sensible and stayed on point for so long--surely the only real take away from Jon's elaborate-ruse-of-a-post, in which he uses lines copied from LoTR arranged in such a way as to to compose an Elizabethan-style coded poem, is the following 'announcement':

sturdy hobbits . . .. There must be . . . Before long . . . next Spring . . . Gondor !!

If only you lot payed attention more!

Thanks Jon

I'm going to read the OP backwards right now, while listening to Stairway to Heaven at 33RPMs...

Don't do that, you'll damage your CD.