Besides familiar examples like unicorn (Latin unus, ‘one’), duet (Latin duo, ‘two’) and triangle (Latin tria, ‘three’), the English language contains a remarkably large collection of words that are derived from the names of numbers, ten of which are listed here. As well as examples like these, however, English is also home to a handful of terms that actually contain numbers or figures, many of which tend to be fairly recent coinages that originally developed as slang or idiomatic expressions. Describing something as 24–7, for instance, comes from 1980s American slang, as does the expression the 411, meaning ‘information’, which derives from the telephone number of the US directory enquiries. A one-eighty or 180 is a 1920s American term for a full reversal or retraction based on the notion of 180-degree turn, whilst to eighty-six or 86 has been used since the 1930s as a verb meaning to ‘cancel’, probably from American rhyming slang for ‘nix’. The earliest of all words and phrases like these, however, is probably one-two-three-four, a mid-nineteenth-century name for a cake comprising one part butter, two parts sugar, three parts flour and four eggs.
In human anatomy, the duodenum is the first section of the small intestine, connected to and lying immediately below the stomach. First used in English in the fourteenth century, its somewhat unusual name stems from the Latin phrase duodenum digitorum – which is itself derived from duodena, the Latin word for a group of twelve – implying that the duodenum is typically ‘twelve digits’ (that is, twelve finger-breadths) in length.
The khamsin or khamaseen is a strong, hot and dry, south-to-south-easterly wind that blows from the Sahara into Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula in spring and early summer, often bringing with it vast sandstorms and duststorms that can last for days on end. The word is based on the Arabic word for ‘fifty’, khamsun, as it is generally understood that the wind blows intermittently for a period of around fifty days beginning in late March.
Literally meaning ‘threes’ in Swahili, the word matatu is believed to have been adopted into English from Kenya, where it is widely used as a name for an unlicensed minibus taxi. A major means of transportation in the most rural areas of Kenya and its surrounding countries, the word matatu is a shortened form of the Swahili phrase mapeni matutu, meaning ‘three ten-cent coins’, as thirty cents is seemingly a standard fare for the service the taxis provide.
Typically used to suggest any large or innumerable amount of something (a sense first recorded in the mid-1500s), the word myriad originally strictly referred to a set of 10,000, and was used particularly in reference to a large hoard of solders or a quantity of money. In this sense, the word derives via Latin from the Ancient Greek word for ‘10,000’, myrias, although this too could be used in some contexts to imply an infinite or unquantifiable amount. Use of the word as an adjective in English – as in ‘myriad possibilities’ or ‘myriad combinations’ – is a later development, dating from the early eighteenth century.
Despite its modern meaning, on its earliest appearance in the language in the Old English period the word noon originally applied to the ninth hour of the day after sunrise, usually reckoned to be around 3 p.m. This use of the word was adopted from the Romans and ultimately noon is derived from the Latin word for ‘ninth’, nonus, and in turn the Latin novem, meaning ‘nine’, from which November is also derived. Remarkably, noon did not come to apply to midday until as relatively recently as the thirteenth century, although quite what prompted the word’s reallocation from 3 p.m. to 12 p.m. is unclear.
Referring to a period of isolation enforced on a person (or originally a ship) suspected of carrying an infectious disease, the word quarantine is derived from the Italian word for ‘forty’, quarantina, as this period of isolation was originally always forty days long. This medical use of the word dates from the mid-seventeenth century in English, but the term had in fact been in use in the language for several centuries before this meaning arose. Previously, quarantine was used in religious contexts to refer to the desert in which Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights (1400s); in legal parlance to a period of forty days during which time a widow legally had the right to remain in her deceased husband’s home (1500s); and it was once the name of a forty-day period of penance observed in the Christian Church (1600s). All of these older uses of the word derive directly from the Latin word for ‘forty’, quadraginta, from which English has also taken quadragene, a forty-day recession of punishment after confession in the Catholic Church, and Quadragesima, the forty days comprising Lent in the Christian calendar.
Derived from the Latin words for ‘five’, quinque, and ‘oar’, remus, a quinquereme was a type of galley used in Ancient Greece and Rome that was powered by a vast number of oarsmen arranged into groups of five. Of similar derivation are the relatively more familiar terms bireme and trireme (with two and three ranks of oars, respectively), as well as the more obscure pentereme (another name for the quinquereme, derived from the Ancient Greek pente, ‘five’), octoreme (a ship with eight men to each oar, from Latin octo, ‘eight’), penteconter (an Ancient Greek vessel with fifty oars, from the Greek pentekonta, meaning ‘fifty’) and tessarakonteres (Greek tessarakonta, ‘forty’), a gigantic galley supposedly built for Ptolemy Philopater of Egypt in the third century BC, thought to have had forty banks of oars.
Dating from the sixteenth century in English, in its earliest recorded sense the word Septuagint referred to the seventy Jewish translators who in the third century BC completed the first translation of the Hebrew Bible into Ancient Greek. According to some accounts – and contrary to the literal meaning of the word, given that septuaginta is the Latin word for ‘seventy’ – there were actually seventy-two translators involved, six from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. They supposedly completed the translation in seventy-two days at the request of King Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt who wished for a copy of the text to be kept in the great library at Alexandria. In English, since the seventeenth century the word Septuagint has come to be used as an alternative name for the entire Greek version of the Old Testament, although this meaning is misleading given that at the time of the original translation the Old Testament would only have comprised the five books of the Jewish Pentateuch, namely Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
Triacontarchy literally means ‘rule by thirty’ and derives from the Ancient Greek words triakonta, meaning ‘thirty’, and arkhein, meaning ‘to rule’, the same root from which words like monarchy, anarchy and hierarchy are all also derived. Specifically, the word pertains to a period in the history of Ancient Greece when, following the victory of Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, a council of thirty pro-Spartan magistrates were put in control of Athens. Also referred to as the oligarchy (from the Greek oligo, meaning ‘few’), these magistrates’ short-lived rule was brought to an end by a bloody coup in 403 BC led by the exiled Greek general Thrasybulus, who overturned the council, killing several of its members in the process.
First recorded in a 1911 work by the American psychologist Isador Coriat, triskaidekaphobia is the proper name for the irrational fear of the number thirteen, a phobia based on the superstitious belief amongst some cultures that the number is somehow unlucky. Derived from the Ancient Greek word for ‘thirteen’, treiskaideka, the word is often also used to describe a superstitious fear of Friday the thirteenth, although the less well-established term paraskevidekatriaphobia (based on the Modern Greek word for ‘Friday’, Paraskevi) has recently been suggested as a more accurate name for that condition.