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
Martha shares a funny story about her five-year-old great-niece, who misunderstood the name of her adopted home state, California. Then again, Unicornia does have a nice ring to it. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “The Republic of...
What’s a word for the act of being so focused on documenting an important event, such as a wedding or an eclipse, that your effort to capture it distracts from experiencing the event itself? The A Way with Words Facebook group has some creative...