The Phrase Finder (find it at phrases.org) is one of my regular ports of call. It should be on a list of the world's best holiday destinations - and you don't even have to fight for a visa to get there. Apart from erudite essays by learned logomaniacs, the website's bulletin board is a source of constant joy. This week I was transported by a discussion of the phrase "Go forth and multiply", which has its genesis in the biblical story of Noah, the original wildlife conservationist.One reader posted that Noah's instructions to the animals to get off the boat and breed were disobeyed by two small snakes that refused to disembark, saying: "We can't multiply. We're adders."A pedant might point out that adding - to join or unite two things - is an act that all too often leads to multiplication, but that would ruin the joke.story_article_left1Pedantry should never be allowed to get in the way of humour, but there are times when nit-picking is a necessary vice.A website called "Mathboy's Page" proves that one should be suspicious of unsubstantiated information on the internet.Most of Mathboy's focus is on sums and such, but he takes a detour into the world of words with a section explaining the etymological origins of mathematical terms. The claims he makes here are somewhat suspect.Take the word "reckon" - which used to mean "count" or "tally" before it became a synonym for "think" - Mathboy reckons it comes from the same root as "arithmetic", which he says was "the Greek word for number".Mathboy might be good at maths, but even if he does know where to put an apostrophe (and even if we forgive his American use of the singular "math"), I reckon he got this wrong.He spells "greek" without a capital letter. Perhaps it was meant to be "geek", because although the Greek arithmos did indeed mean "number", Mathboy's linking it to "reckon" does not add up."Reckon" comes from Germanic roots meaning "to move in a straight line". This I learned from the Online Etymology Dictionary, a site as assiduous as The Phrase Finder when it comes to rigorous accuracy checks.story_article_right2Words and numbers do, however, have many things in common. Some might say words are superior because you can write a number in word form but you can't write a word in number form (although I am expecting to hear differently from the mathematical fraternity). It depends on your point of view, I suppose.Back to the connections, there is "count", which grew out of the Old French word conter, meaning not just "to add up" but "to tell a story". An "account" can be both a story and a bill. To "recount" is to describe a happening; a "re-count" is a safeguard against voter fraud.Arithmetic is interesting too. The English used to spell it "arsmetrik" and employed it not only for counting purposes but as a substitute for the Old English word tælcræft ("tell-craft").Keeping the original spelling might have made the subject more pleasing to sniggering schoolboys, but breaking arithmetic's connection with divination was probably a good thing.Wikipedia, which sits somewhere between Mathboy and The Phrase Finder in terms of credibility, says that "mathematics" used to mean "astrology", which led to some mistranslations, in particular St Augustine's warning to beware of mathematici. He meant astrologers, but to the math-phobic among us it might as well have been the other.degroots@sundaytimes.co.za ..