Comment by sltkr

2 days ago

Weird parenthesization. The latin numbers are septem, octo, novem, decem for 7, 8, 9, 10. And then they all have a -ber suffix.

The three letter prefixes show up in English (eg oct in octal, dec in decimal, etc.).

  • The prefix in "decimal" is "decim", like you'd expect given that the root is "decem". There is no "dec-" prefix.

    (You do see "deca" used as a prefix, "a" included, but that doesn't come from Latin.)

    • You are right. I should have written: (septem)ber was the 7th month of the year, (octo)ber was the 8th, (novem)ber the ninth, and (decem)ber the tenth!