Mark Twain passage of boat, was a measure on the sounding line. Twain is an archaic term for "two", as in "The veil of the temple was rent in twain." The riverboatman's cry was "mark twain" or, more fully, "by the mark twain", meaning "according to the mark [on the line], [the depth is] two [fathoms]", that is, "The water is deep and it is safe to pass." Twain said that his famous pen name was not entirely his invention. In "Life on the Mississippi", he wrote: Captain Isaiah Sellers was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot
Grammatical number ("He goes" versus "They go"). English treats zero with the plural number. Old English did contain dual grammatical numbers. The Finnish language has a plural form of almost every noun case (except the comitative, which is formally only plural). However, when a number is used, or a word signifying a number (monta- many), the singular version of the partitive case is used. and where no specific number is mentioned, the plural version of the partitive case is used and in the possessive (genitive) In modern Romance languages, nouns, adjectives and articles are declined according to number (singular or plural only).