Wednesday, January 16, 2008

#69

nonagenarian \non-uh-juh-NAIR-ee-uhn; no-nuh-\, noun:
A ninety year old person; someone whose age is in the nineties.

There seemed to be relatively few octogenarians and nonagenarians alive in the early 1930s. Contrast that with my current practice, in which I see a great number of patients in their eighties and nineties.
-- Stephen L. Richmond, "Tales from the Death Certificate", Physician Assistant, January 1999

Good health is essential, of course--a gift that none of these nonagenarians, having outlived friends and loved ones, takes for granted.
-- Roy Huffman, "Working Past 90", Fortune, November 13, 2000


Nonagenarian derives from Latin nonagenarius, "containing or consisting of ninety," from nonageni-, "ninety each", ultimately from novem, "nine," as in November, originally the ninth month of the old Roman calendar.


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Highest Recorded Number of Children
The highest officially recorded number of children born to one mother is 69, to the first wife of Feodor Vassilyev (1707-1782) of Shuya, Russia. Between 1725 and 1765, in a total of 27 confinements, she gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets, and four sets of quadruplets. 67 of them survived infancy.


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