Re: zeroth. was Re: Please welcome . . .

On Mon, Dec 15, 2003 at 12:17:12PM -0800, Gary Shannon wrote:
> I use "zeroth" frequently to refer to the zorth
> element of an array.
That's fairly common, just not the way I do it.  If I need to be sure
the listener understands what I'm saying in technical detail, I'll
say "array sub zero" or some such.

> And I tried a hundred rhymes for month,
> and found one on the hundred-oneth.
Heh.  I like that.  With respect to that, I definitely would write
the ordinal of -1 as "-1st" and read it as "minus first".  (Not to be confused
with Minas First, the long-lost archetype of all Middle-Earthen
towers . . .)

Sadly, John's limerick doesn't rhyme for me, since I don't
pronounce powers as ordinals unless I'm including the word "power".
So x^n is "x to the n" or "x to the nth power", but not *"x to the nth".
Similarly,  x^(n+1) is "x to the quantity n plus one" or "x to
the n-plus-one'th power", which includes the desired "oneth" but loses
the scansion and rhyme.

-Mark

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