Bill Earngey [Order this photo]

Viruses commonly invade us with no better reason than they can, and if you believe we humans are basically just a collection of cooperative bacteria configured according to an ever shifting gene pool, then you will have no problem believing that the English language is slowly mutating numeric descriptions into words.

Possibly this isn't mutation but merely a curled pinky-finger, tea-drinking fashion brought to us by National Public Radio, however the Bible did set the trend by defining the numerical length of our lifetime as "three score and ten [years]." You do the math.

Oh, yeah, there is that pesky problem of "score." Okay, a score is 20, now you do the math. Why? Beats my two-pair. Why not just say 70.

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln, the Great Communicator (no, Ronald Reagan was the Great Confabulator), began his famous Gettysburg address with, "Four score and seven years ago." Quickly now, how many years is that?

Extra points: What year is he talking about, and for extra, extra points, how many is that in dog years?

You bet it's irritating, so why is this new old-fashioned, clumsy and pathologically confusing dilettante language coming back to visit us?

The most trendy of the pack right now is "decade," which is half a score in their language, or, plainly enough, 10 years. The most mangled sense of attempted communication on the radio so far is, "... the worst in a quarter of a century." Really? Do you mean "in 25 years? Yeah?" Well, then why not just say what you mean?

Most upsetting was a war correspondent reporting that a suicide bomber in Baghdad killed three-dozen people. Think about it. What comes in dozens? Eggs do and a baker's dozen does, and so does a twelve-pack of beer. All of which takes away from the hard fact that 36 human beings died.

It trivializes the deaths of these human beings because "dozen" is a wiggle-word meaning either objects or people or "a large number of," which means the reporter was shinning us on, hoping we couldn't tell he was guessing.

What's next, measuring time by tablespoons? Could be, but we won't really know until exactly several decades from now.