nines
n.— «Within the past week, our collective system has caught an additional 40 spams that would have otherwise gotten through. Clearly it is proving itself to be helpful in A. breaking down the isolation barrier between statistical-based filter users, and B. helping to mudge past three-nines accuracy.» —“Spam and ‘undisclosed recipients’” by Jonathan A. Zdziarski Full-Disclosure email list Nov. 16, 2003. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Welcome to another A Way with Words newsletter! With any luck, our A Way with Words email messages don’t end up in your spam folder. But did you ever wonder why junk mail is called spam in the first place? There’s a funny story behind this term, and...