(1 Kings, v, 14:) i. e., ten thousand, monthly; or, as our merchants say, “per month.”  Some grammarians have also remarked, that, “In mercantile accounts, we frequently see a put for to, in a very odd sort of way; as, ’Six bales marked 1 a 6.’  The merchant means, ‘marked from 1 to 6.’  This is taken to be a relic of the Norman French, which was once the law and mercantile language of England; for, in French, a, with an accent, signifies to or at.”—­Emmons’s Gram., p. 73.  Modern merchants, in stead of accenting the a, commonly turn the end of it back; as, @.

OBS. 26.—­Sometimes a numeral word with the indefinite article—­as a few, a great many, a dozen, a hundred, a thousand—­denotes an aggregate of several or many taken collectively, and yet is followed by a plural noun, denoting the sort or species of which this particular aggregate is a part:  as, “A few small fishes,”—­“A great many mistakes,”—­“A dozen bottles of wine,”—­“A hundred lighted candles,”—­“A thousand miles off.”  Respecting the proper manner of explaining these phrases, grammarians differ in opinion.  That the article relates not to the plural noun, but to the numerical word only, is very evident; but whether, in these instances, the words few, many, dozen, hundred, and thousand, are to be called nouns or adjectives, is matter of dispute.  Lowth, Murray, and many others, call them adjectives, and suppose a peculiarity of construction in the article;—­like that of the singular adjectives every and one in the phrases, “Every ten days,”—­“One seven times more.”—­Dan., iii, 19.  Churchill and others call them nouns, and suppose the plurals which follow, to be always in the objective case governed by of, understood:  as, “A few [of] years,”—­“A thousand [of] doors;”—­like the phrases, “A couple of fowls,”—­“A score of fat bullocks.”—­Churchill’s Gram., p. 279.  Neither solution is free from difficulty.  For example:  “There are a great many adjectives.”—­Dr. Adam.  Now, if many is here a singular nominative, and the only subject of the verb, what shall we do with are? and if it is a plural adjective, what shall we do with a and great? Taken in either of these ways, the construction is anomalous.  One can hardly think the word “adjectives” to be here in the objective case, because the supposed ellipsis of the word of cannot be proved; and if many is a noun, the two words are perhaps in apposition, in the nominative.  If I say, “A thousand men are on their way,” the men are the thousand, and the thousand is nothing but the men; so that I see not why the relation of the terms may not be that of apposition.  But if authorities are to decide the question, doubtless we must yield it to those who suppose the whole numeral phrase to be taken adjectively; as, “Most young Christians have, in the course of half a dozen years, time to read a great many pages.”—­Young Christian, p. 6.