https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_hundred
In older varieties of English and other Germanic languages, "hundred" meant the number we now write as 120. 100 was tenty, and 110 was eleventy
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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And of course, the Professor would know this. It's why he used it.
And together with Frodo they celebrated their 144th birthday and as such invited 144 guests, 12 x 12, which is also called a gross.
Proudfeet!
Shouldn't the long hundred be 144, ie 100 in base 12?
They didn't seem to use base-12 in general, just a sort of limited application of it in this context specifically. The words "eleven" and "twelve" both derive from "one left (after ten)" and "two left (after ten)", so they seemed to have been thinking of 10 as the base at that scale. And then the long thousand was ten times the long hundred, so that scale was also base-10. The wiki article suggests that it may be a lingering trace of more extensive usage of base-12 that had otherwise broadly been abandoned in favour of base-10