Re: British v. American Vocabulary


Thu, 21 Sep 1995 01:13:06 GMT

jzahn@aol.com (JZahn) wrote:

>'Fortnight' is understood in America, but it's very seldom used. Back in
>college, my engineering friends and I used to amuse ourselves by creating
>Physics problems and requiring that the answers be expressed in furlongs
>per fortnight, and similar unusual units.

The funniest use of "fortnight" I can recall is a unit of measurement
used in VAX computer systems: microfortnights. Since a microfortnight
is about 1.2 seconds, why not jsut use seconds? I suppose the people
at DEC must have an interesting sense of humor.

DSR