1086
Time is math I think (thelemmy.club)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/mathmemes@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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[–] 5 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

It is now, but it used to be part of a base 12 system. 12 is a dozen, a dozen dozen is a gross, and dozen gross is a great gross.

There was some rough times as it switched to decimal and you wind up with bullshit like the 'long hundred' being 10 dozen and a short hundred being 10 tens.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Fair enough.

    I was going to bemoan not having a special character for 11 and 12 but I guess people weren't writing things down so much in the 1500's and maybe there were characters for those numbers.

    I wonder if that's why we name 11 eleven and 12 twelve rather than firsteen and seconteen.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Nah, eleven and twelve not having a -teen suffix is because English doesn't have any standards and steals language randomly. Both are germanic in origin, but different time periods. Eleven and twelve come from a 12th century system of counting on your fingers (twelve basically means 'two left' after you count to ten), and -teen is from a 14th century math perspective (thirteen basically means 'ten more than three').

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