God Bless Umpteen
Created | Updated Feb 3, 2004
All we can say of umpteen is that it is a complex number >2j, but necessarily neither real, integer nor positive. It is generally thought that it was coined by folk who could not count past 10 (or however many fingers they had). Rumour has it that the maximum number of children that one couple can have is umpteen, since by then you can never actually count them since they are moving so much and all look so similar (try counting ants or Irish children). It is sometimes thought that umpteen was the foundation for Heisenberg's indeterminate principle for electron speed versus location and is coined in one of his famous, if uncertain, quotes. "I don't care if Schrodinger had umpteen %!*? cats in his box...".
Some religious folk believe that "’Umpteen’" is truly a gospel word,". "A word of grace. It conveys the love of a parent who does not bother to keep an EXACT count of my failings and inadequacies. It would have really bothered me to hear my mother say, "I’ve told you 4 times to do that." She’s counting? "Umpteen" times leaves a little room for grace to operate." ..... They go on to say that God works in base Umpteen - quite profound (except that there can not then be 10 commandments!). It is also handy when counting paedophile priests.
There is also rumour that its derivation is the same as Umpire - meaning someone blameless (nomper - no peer) who makes mistakes that are uncountable (or it would force the MLB to show umpire's stats for bad calls!) "this umpire has a 78% accuracy for home teams, 85% for visitors, 92% for left handers......"
The first use of the word is to be found in Westminster abbey records of Thomas Beckett "...and the rounde table was thus sized to hoste umpteen knights..", mimicing Mary and Jesus' notes left at Rennes Le Chateau on the last supper, "...there was room even for Thomas, the umpteenth apostle..". http://www.renneslechateau.com/
