MetaChat - "One one-thousand" vs. "One Mississippi"

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12 August 2007

"One one-thousand" vs. "One Mississippi" Here in the States, we use these phrases when counting down, to represent a unit of one second.

"One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand . . . "
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The counter staff at my local Starbucks were arguing about which one more accurately represents one second. Supposedly, "One Mississippi" actually represents 1.02 seconds, and is not as accurate as the other.

(Yes, it is that kind of a summer morning, with scorching heat and humidity so thick that walking turns into swimming. Everyone's at the beach except for me, the tourists and the unlucky guys who got stuck at Starbucks.)

So which one do you use?

post by: jason's_planet at: 11:52 | 9 comments

I'm actually fairly good at just counting out seconds. I think it comes from staring at cooking timers a lot while I'm cooking.

"Mississippi," however, has several pronunciations, and I most often slur it down to three syllables ("missippi"), which might shave the time down to one second.

posted by occhiblu 12 August | 11:57

I use POTATOES.

one - potato

two - potato

three - potato

posted by contessa 12 August | 12:07

Does anyone else associate one-Mississippi with childhood backyard football games?

I use one-thousand, though you've got to start fudging a little when you get into the polysyllabic numbers.

posted by box 12 August | 12:22

I used steamboats when counting seconds off.

posted by LunaticFringe 12 August | 13:05

I look at my watch.

posted by wendell 12 August | 13:22

"Missippi" is most definitely the proper pronunciation (quoth the former "Missippian"). This does indeed shave the timing down to about one second.

I alternate between "Missippi" and "thousand," though.

posted by brina 12 August | 13:49

I can't remember the last time I needed to count off seconds. But a traffic policeman friend once told me that the safest way to drive on the motorway is to stay at least three seconds behind the car in front.

To do this, watch the car in front pass a marker (a tree, a line across the road, etc) and you're three seconds behind if you can say "only a fool breaks the three second rule" before you cross the marker.

posted by essexjan 12 August | 15:48

My family uses elephants - and the most frequent application for this 'skill' is to work out how far away thunderstorms are. Lightning [count elephants] thunder - the number of elephants is the number of miles away the storm is, or something like that.

posted by altolinguistic 12 August | 17:05

I use my home town of Halifax. In my defense, I've used it since before I moved here.

1 Halifax, 2 Halifax...

posted by seanyboy 12 August | 17:19

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