• PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
    3·
    8 months ago

    Tbf I think in English it’s more like… 9*10+7

    I’m not a historian or linguist so there is a good chance I’m wrong, but I just kind of always assumed that “ninety” meant “nine-tens” - that the “ty” was an earlier form of, or was corrupted from, “tens”.

    • can
      3·
      8 months ago

      Checks out:

      from Old English nigontig, from nine + -tig “group of ten”