Re: CHAT: Measurements (was: Re: CHAT: browsers)

From: "Joe" <joe@...>
> > To be perfectly clear; I am and was conscious of use of "myriad" as "very
> > large number". I jokingly suggested that we CONLANG list members should try
> > and replace this usuage with "myriad"="ten thousand".
>
> Is it true that the original greek word meant >=10,000?  I heard that
> somewhere...
Well, according to _New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin_:

    << G mu:/rioi '10,000'; mu:ria/s, -a/dos 'a number of 10,000'; combining
forms mu:ri- and mu:rio/-.  These also have the meaning of any immense number,
and that is probably the original sense.  The stem-forms are obviously based  on
the morphology of actual numbers, but that does not prove that they were numbers
to begin with (NB NE _umpteen_ 'a medium-sized number', _jillion_ 'a huge
number').  Various other IE languages have specific words for '10,000', with
little agreement among them.  The closest match in form and function is between
the G forms and a poetic OIr form, _múr_ 'great number, multitude'. >>

    *Muke!
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