Twleve (for Twelve)

My too-lovely niece is turning twelve today, which makes it an auspicious year in (eleven) more ways than one. There are 16 hits for Twleve in OhioLINK, nudging it into the "high probability" category on the Ballard list. The word twelve comes from the German twa-lif or "two-leave," meaning you have two left over after taking away the base (ten). The number twelve figures prominently into a number of religions, calendars, and units of time. A "baker's dozen" is actually thirteen of a thing, and Lillian Gilbreth, the efficiency expert who gave birth to the brood embodied in the book and movie Cheaper by the Dozen, was born 130 years ago, or a full baker's dozen times ten. Wikipedia refers to twelve as both "sublime" and "semiperfect" and I can't imagine a better way of describing our Birthday Girl as well. Many (if not precisely twelve) happy returns of the day, sweetheart! (Gaggle of Gilbreths, from the TV Fan Forum website.)

Carol Reid