Language Log: “Every 52 seconds”: wrong by 23,736 percent?

I refuse to admit that I am more than fifty-two, even if that does make my sons illegitimate. (Nancy Astor)

The Eskimo has fifty-two names for snow because it is important to them; there ought to be as many for love. (Margaret Atwood)

When you get to fifty-two food becomes more important than sex. (Tom Lehrer)

For it was Saturday night, the best and bingiest glad-time of the week, one of the fifty-two holidays in the slow-turning Big Wheel of the year, a violent preamble to a prostrate Sabbath. (Alan Sillitoe)

Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan. Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two. (Wislawa Szymborska)

I was asked to come to Chicago because Chicago is one of our fifty-two states. (Raquel Welch)

via Language Log: “Every 52 seconds”: wrong by 23,736 percent?.

Updated: 8th Nov 2024 – Not sure what I was thinking when I wrote this…… check the link out, make more sense.