General Placeholder Names
English has many words whose definition includes an indefinite quantity, such as "lots", "many", "plenty", "several", and "some". A number of other words have been used to convey the idea in informal or humorous ways, such as "gobs of "(e.g., "gobs of jobs" career fair); and n-something, used especially to indicate someone's age within a decade, e.g., twentysomething.
Read more about this topic: Indefinite And Fictitious Numbers
Famous quotes containing the words general and/or names:
“It was the words “descended into Hades”
That seemed too pagan to our liberal youth.
You know they suffered from a general onslaught.
And well, if they weren’t true why keep right on
Saying them like the heathen? We could drop them.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“If marriages were made by putting all the men’s names into one sack and the women’s names into another, and having them taken out by a blindfolded child like lottery numbers, there would be just as high a percentage of happy marriages as we have here in England.... If you can tell me of any trustworthy method of selecting a wife, I shall be happy to make use of it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)