Radiant wrote:
eytanz wrote:
A Roman mile is not a mile. The question in its current phrasing is "how much is a dozen? 9, 11, or 13?" and the correct answer being "13", because 13 is a baker's dozen.
Except that the so-called baker's dozen came after the dozen, and is a variation on that; whereas the Roman mile is the original mile, and all other miles are a variation on that one.
No, it's not the original mile. Romans didn't speak English, and they didn't call it a mile, the Latin term was "
Mila"
. As far as I can tell, by the time the English form of the word was introduced the most common usage was the current usage.
But even if it were the original mile, I can't see why that matters. Here's another parallel: "
how many stars on the American flag?"
Well, the *first* official American flag design had 13 stars. Does that make it the right answer? No, because the current flag supercedes the previous ones. An American flag has 50 stars - though there were times in history (indeed, most of the history of the US) when that was not true. "
Name the president of the USA"
- the answer is George W. Bush, not George Washington, even though Washington was the original president.
Meanings of words change, just like flags change and presidents change. "
Mile"
may arguably have referred to 1.48 km once, but it doesn't anymore.
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