Many Happy Returns!

[mundungus42]

For the 42 Matriarch, in Honor of Her X8th Birthday
A currently tuneless song from her favorite eldest daughter

Comments

[appleweb]

Oh Mung! This is beautiful! Thank you! It's awfully nice to have a writer in the family. And thank you for your birthday serenade. Pop took us out for steak and Pete bought us ice cream at the new ice cream shop, so I had a nice birthday. Oh, help your Ma out..what does duodecisected mean? Twenty? I'm glad I can ask the poet!
I love you,
Ma

[mundungus42]

I'm so glad you like it! As soon as I got your answering machine, I ran to the piano and got all Cole Porter-ey ;) I'm glad you have a lovely dinner out, and do write more about this new ice cream shop! I'm intrigued!

I was trying to find a word that meant "split into twelve parts" to describe the clock, so I did a bit of research into Greek prefixes. So duodeci- is twelve, and I had to throw in a bit of Latin (sectum, to divide) to the mix. I'm lucky- twelve was as high as the list went! :D

I was also very much inspired by your post about your campsite and the lovely accompanying picture. My office windows face the quad and lots of trees, so I'm getting my spring green, too. I hope you don't mind the bizarre scansion- you know I'm capable of doing punctilious meter, but this was designed with musical phrases in mind. Here's hoping I can get it properly scored one of these days. If so, you're getting it on your answering machine and/or in person :)

Love you so much, and I hope your birthday was wonderful!

[trinary]

what's interesting is that, although duodeci indeed means twelve (two plus ten), duodeviginti mean eighteen (two less than twenty -- literally two from twenty). similarly, duodetriginta is 28 and so on.

the key is the extra de after the duo.

I guess duodedecinti had too much of the duh duh duh sound for it to make a suitable replacement for octo.

(cool poem, btw)

[mundungus42]

Gosh, you learn something new every day! It also makes me wonder how on earth they did such amazing architecture with such a goofy system of words to describe numbers! :D (thanks! it makes me want to sing! :D)