Day 40 - Forty

Which numbers when spelled out look most representative of the number itself? Forty is good. For = Four. T = First letter of Ten. Add them together, For +T = For T = Forty. Looks good to me. 

Right we've got a lot to get through so let's get started. First off, One. I don't really know what to make of it. My immediate thought is it looks like it should rhyme with bone. Is that good enough for what we would all agree is the most important number? The foundation of everything. On the other hand the mysterious spelling serves as an apt metaphor for mankind's unsuccessful ongoing search for the meaning of life. If 'one' doesn't even look right, what hope do we have? Jury's out on 'One'. As of yet, undecided.

Next up, Two. What the fuck is that? Ridiculous. What's that 'w' doing there? I know the word "too" is already taken but I think we need to swap the spellings around. "Too" works better for the number because there are two o's. Whereas "Two" is too confusing, or should I say two confusing. 

You've guessed it, yes, "Three". Similar to the previous paragraph on "Two", I would prefer there to be three e's and for it to instead be "Threee". Despite this it is still much better than the abomination of "Two". Three is an exciting number and it's double 'E' has shades of "Yippee", as in the football term "Yippee I've scored three!". I like three. 

Four is solid. Solid like a square. A four sided square. Solid like short sentences. Four is strong.

Five. For some reason when I looked at this word my instinct was to look at my hand, see my five fingers and in that moment something just felt right (and I know it's four and a thumb but come on, it's five long things sticking out of your hand). I can't explain my rationale but I'm giving Five the benefit of the doubt.

Yes this is still carrying on and yes I am going to go through every number, even if it takes my whole life. Six. I like the 'S' on Six, it nicely represents the curly nature of the number. I also like the brevity which allows you to focus in on the correctly chosen S, whilst also using one of the cooler letters, X. However, although cool, use of the letter X does confuse things slightly with X commonly being used to represent ten. Arguably it would make more sense for 6 to be "Sih", 60 to be "Six" and 600 to be "Sixty" (see Forty for explanation of rationale behind Six + T).

Seven written out, to me, is the longest word which looks like a swan. Or does it just look a bit like the word swan? Or does the word swan look like a swan? Is there such thing as onomatopoeia but instead of sound, a word which physically looks like what it represents? If there is, I want to nominate swan. But swans have nothing to do with the number seven, unless there are seven swans of course, but that would be purely circumstantial. Not a great start for seven. The central 'v' is the letter most fitting, so it has some redeeming features. And similar to one, there is an element of mystery to seven; lucky seven, seven deadly sins, the largest single digit prime number etc. So it not quite making sense does work in a way. I'm going to give seven a seven out of ten.

Eight ought not but might be right, a hard fought tight fraught fight I thought. An unsightly fright or a bright delight like a light draught pint? My insight sought is it's alright. 

There is a strong tart tang to Nine. A punishment to the ears, it is the perfect alert for the emergency services. But is it the perfect representation for the symbol? We must factor in that the emergency services phone number does not pre-date the word "nine", so this becomes irrelevant and we must judge it on it's merit alone. The alarming noise does still have some relevance, providing a warning that we are about to approach double figures. Are you sure you want to level up? NINE! It also closely resembles the German word 'Nein', meaning "No", as in "no more single digit numbers now". Another warning. Nine is a cautionary number and I think it's cautionary and alarming tone is depicted well by it's thin sharp word.

Ten is strong in an almost symmetrical way. Obviously it isn't symmetrical, but neither is the number. However like symmetry Ten is neat and 10 is also neat. Something in that general area. Anyway, as per previous examples, there is an argument that Ten should instead be Onety. But Onety doesn't possess the strength of Ten and I don't really think that Onety looks much like 10 either. Onety obviously has the O/0 thing (Onety = O, 10 = 0), but the similarities end there. Plus the T in 'Ten' looks more like the 1 than the 't' in Onety does, and as with the number it's at the start. Also if it was Onety, the T = Ten aspect explained in the first paragraph about Forty would not work. I'm in favour of Ten. 

I'm going to end this there before I completely lose my mind. Maybe I'll carry on from eleven (11) one (1) day.