Grandad, recently returned from his tour of the USA, is turning 89 next week or so. Gloating on his good health last weekend, he was talking about what life might hold for him in his next decade.
He couldn't quite think of the word for being in one's nineties. He is a crossword fiend, so this was a shock. I sometimes consider myself ok with words, so I had a think about it, and realised that this is one of those words that I presume I know, but actually do not, have never, and worse, can't figure out.
Sure, we all know the others - but nine?!
No-one knew, and Grandad moved on from trying to think of the word to deal with more meaningful activities like planning his social calendar and working on his golf game. But it bugged me. This is a gap in the numbers! With an aging population, we *need* this word - it's going to have to do a lot more work for us! Someone needs to know! What if the only person in the world who knows how to refer to the ages between 90 and 99 in a single word dies of avian flu? I was driven to do something.
I went to the Oxford. Nine, ninety both there. Got distracted, read the whole column either side. No clues. Went to Septuagenarian, hoping they'd run against type and give the whole listing. Nope. Tried Octogenarian. Also there, also no clues.
Tap tap tap went my fingers on the cover of the book. Hhmmm.
'Sherlock Holmes wouldn't be stumped by this.' I thought. That clever bastard would just know, sure, but when Watson didn't know, he would prompt him, what would he say? What would he say......
AHA!
I went back and checked again - YES! Sept and Oct are both GREEK ROOTS, whereas nine is something else, something that doesn't work when you try and be clever with it. Ergo, my answer will be solved, if only I can think of the Greek word/root for nine!!!
Shame I don't know any Greek then, isn't it.
Still, isn't this exciting?!
Actually at this point, feeling like I'd done the hard yards by solving the process to the problem (if not the problem itself) I turned to those glorious tools (Google and Wikipedia) and within 0.12 seconds had over 2 millions listings for "greek nine", number one being "ennea-".
Of COURSE! the Enneagram. I should have remembered that!!!!!!!
What a dullard.
I read on - how fascinating the number nine is! Did you know that 9 It is the first composite lucky number? That 9 is the second non-unitary square prime (3^2)? That it has a unique aliquot sum σ(n) 4 which is itself a square prime? (all from wiki of course, I don't even understand what this says, and there's *lots* more where this came from!) .
Wow huh. I just like it because it's so round, and it's three lots of three, and three is the coolest number (apart from zero, which, it turns out, is considered an *even* number - what you can't learn off Wiki huh?) .
I digress.
There's still no actual answer to the question, except that now I could be 90% confident to guess it. Well, a guess isn't good enough when it's saturday night and I've already watched "Point Break" .... try enneagarian in the Oxford - not there. God how I hate having to work with this tiny thing! (the "Concise"- really!?) I put it into google "Do you mean Enneagram?" no, i do not. Damn! Perhaps I'm on the wrong track?! How long could this take? I do the old Enneagarian + dictionary search, and Google has given up on me! "Do you mean hungarian + Dictionary?"
ARGH!!
I'm going to have to wait until Monday when I can get to a proper dictionary!!!!!!
Don't you worry - I'm going to track this down!!
Wait, one last idea. Let me check something over at Wiki again....
Yes, Wiki listed a latin prefix as well - nono.
Could it be that we use Greek all the time, except this once?!
Oh yes, there it is : Nonogenerian.
Oxford, google, both agree, nonogenerian, not enneawhatever. I was using my brain and it was wrong.
*sigh*
On the upside, at least I'll have something to write in Grandad's birthday card next year!
7 comments:
ohmygod, I think I love you.
p.s.
wiki-ed ninety + octogenarian.
your blog came up, thus saving me from a rinky-dink wind-about trip toward the correct answer and to your writing instead.
Septua and Octo are not Greek but are prefixes derived from the names of Latin numbers Unus, Duo, Tres, Quattor, Quinque, Sex, Septem, Octo, Novem, Decim. That's the reason your Greek nine didn't work out. It also explains where the names for the Sunday's before Lent originate - Septuagesima for the seventh Sunday before Easter and third Sunday before Lent, Sexagesima for the sixth Sunday before Easter and second Sunday before Lent, and Quinquagesima for the fifth Sunday before Easter and Sunday next before Lent. In the early church, what is now called the First Sunday in Lent was called Quatragesima. The names Septuagesima, Sexagesima, & Quinquagesima are so named because the early church had 70, 60, 50, or 40 days of Lent depending on time period and location. It is also significant that Latin was the language of the Western Church during that period.
You speeled it worng: Nonagenarian
Chris is right (at least about the Nonagenarian part), but thank you! I couldn't find it anywhere.
Nice one Chris, he sure did speel it wrong
Here we are almost 6 years after the first comment and there is no telling how many folks have seen your answer but did not stop to say "thanks." So I say to you, friend netizen, Thank-you! (And good job.)
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