--- Costentin Cornomorus <elemtilas@...> wrote:
> --- David Barrow <davidab@...>
> wrote:
<snip>
>
> Except I don't understand it as a noun there,
> exactly: not "a lot". It doesn't make any sense
> to me that way. Hm.
>
> > lots is the plural alternative
> > we also have
> > an amount of
> > a number of
> > a quantity of
The thing that seems to be often forgotten today is
that "lot" used to be a unit of measure like "pound"
or "quart". One would say something like "Give me one
lot of the blue ones and three lots of the green
ones." Auctioneers still refer to a collection of
articles for sale as a single lot as in "We now offer
lot number 26 consisting of 200 antique books."
So "a lot" eventually came to mean "a fairly large
quantity of" and "lots" meant "more than one lot" in
the same sense that "gallons" as in "she shed gallons
of tears" indicates some idefinite number of gallons
greater than one.
That is what makes "alot of milk" just as wrong as
"agallon of milk or apound of butter." There is no
justification for appending "a" to any unit of
measure.
[end rant]
But then again only two things are constant in
language. 1. It will continue to change and 2. the
older generation will regard the changes as ignorant
at best and horrifying at worst.
--gary