five nines
n.— «My phone line has been out—completely out, no dial tone—for 2 days since I discovered and reported the outage. If “five nines” were a guarantee, that is, if it had any reality to it at all, I could expect 100,000 days, or 274 years, of perfect service for each day my phone were out, or 548 years total.» —“Verizon owes me 1365 years of perfect service” by David S. Isenberg Isen.blog Apr. 7, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
The words tough, through, and dough all end in O-U-G-H. So why don’t they rhyme? A lively new book addresses the many quirks of English by explaining the history of words and phrases. And: have you ever been in a situation where a group makes...
In 1971, when a new public library opened in Troy, Michigan, famous authors and artists were invited to write letters to the city’s youngest readers, extolling the many benefits of libraries. One of the loveliest was from E.B. White, author of...