Twenty-one
One and twenty
Two decades and a year
Two score and a year
“Elizabeth is twenty-one years old.”
“Elizabeth is one and twenty years of age.”
“Two decades and a year ago, Elizabeth was born from a woman in a cottage.”
“Two score and a year ago, Elizabeth was born from a woman in a cottage.”
Out of all of them, I am concerned with the second quote in the list. The latter two sound too fancy, and the first one’s structure is very common when expressing age. For some reason, I can’t really find age expressions in Google or anywhere else that talks about the second form of expressing numbers. In literature, some writers will say “one and twenty” instead of “twenty-one”. In poetry, there is the “four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.” What’s with this syntax? Do REAL people actually talk like that? Who would really say “one and twenty” or “four and twenty” or “four score and seven years ago”?
I think it’s Germanic in origin: it’s how you say numbers in Dutch and German.
“Eenentwintig” = “oneandtwenty” (all stuck together, just the way we like to do it)
So I would’ve thought that it would’ve been more common in times gone by to say the numbers like that, considering the Germanic origins of the English language. Speculation though, so I’ll leave that up to Dopers who know more about this.
English is not a thing. English is a mixture of vocabularies. Spoken English in very different from written English in almost every way. Written English has numerous layers, from the most formal to the most casual. Both spoken and written English make great use of twisting words, phrases, and combinations for effect. Rap, slang, leet speak, cant, argot, dialect, regionalisms, all use vocabularies that are not found in the most formal English. In many of those cases, the entire point is to use vocabulary not found in the most formal English.
Literary English is just another of the many varieties of English. It makes its point by sometime using the most formal English and sometimes varying away from it. So this vocabulary isn’t used in ordinary spoken English. That’s an advantage, not a flaw.
Forgot to mention, the thread title had me suspecting this was going to be about the expression (sometimes used to caption paintings), “John Smith, in his 23rd year,” which (like with century numbers) is off by one because it refers to a current state rather than a completed state and thus actually means he is 22.