History of a hundred English-speakers, when referring to the number 100, have the choice in many contexts of using "hundred," derived from old English and Germanic words, or "century," with its Latin and Romance roots. But there are anomalies: those living in the "nineteen-hundreds" were also experiencing the 20th century. A "hundred" itself was originally a medieval area of land; this usage survives in the Chiltern Hundreds and The Hundred in Romsey. It consisted of 100 "hides" and, in an early version of the decimal system, a hide was composed of 100 acres (although acres varied in size in different parts of the country). Most "hundreds," therefore, consisted of 10,000 acres, or a little over 15 square miles. The other measurement based on 100 is of course the "hundredweight," which has dwindled out of use with the rise of metric units. Still, even the hundredweight was actually 112 pounds rather than 100, and its abbreviation (cwt) acknowledged the Roman influence.
Hundreds and thousands People often struggle to distinguish between large numbers; problems begin at anything much over 100. Even the numerate might hesitate if asked to rank the following in order of size: 1bn, 900,000, 150m. The imagination boggles when confronted with millions or billions - hence the frequency with which newspapers mix them up. A useful way of thinking of large numbers is to make 100 a building block. Think of a line of 100 small objects - say cubes of sugar. Next, imagine that the row is turned into a square by adding 99 new lines of 100. You now have 10,000 cubes. Turn the square into a large cube by piling another 99 squares on top of the first one, and you have arrived at a million (100x100x100). The way to the billions is now clear: simply repeat the previous process, but this time take ten of the million-sized cubes in each direction to build one that will contain 1,000. Finally, six of these super-cubes will have a total "population" as large as the number of people on this planet.
100 per cent proof The ubiquitous percentage is the best example of the use of the "Latin hundred" in daily life. And these days, everything seems to have to run increasingly close to 100 per cent perfection. If yiur child scores 85 per cent in an exam, you probably feel very pleased. But if your train to work achieves 86 per cent punctuality you may well join a protest group. And denunciation of the Post Office and all its works is likely if it manages to deliver a mere 90 per cent of your furst-class letters. Moving up a gear, we have come to expect 99 per cent reliabioity from our machinery as a routine minimum - and nowhere more so than in transport. There are about 480,000 flights a year in and out of London's airports. 99.9 per cent reliability would mean nine falling out of the air every week. Something like 40m journeys are made on our roads every day. On average, seven people die. Your chances of surviving are therefore an adequate 99.999983 per cemt. But buy a ticket today for tomorrow's national lottery, and you are twice as likely to be killed on the roads before the draw than to win a ?1m-plus prize. Now, read the last four paragraphs again. They contain four deliberate typos - so the accuracy rate is almost 99.6 per cent. Nonetheless I would guess that those four errors leaped out and hit you in the eye.
