Perhaps JJMoney is right. Maybe I do need a vacation. The other night, I changed this construction for about the 40,000th time:<p>"A quartet of gunmen held up the Bumfville Bodega early Saturday...."<p>Why use "four" when you can use a longer, more colorful descriptor like "a quartet of" that leads "The Reader" to picture a bunch of guys with striped coats, soup-strainer mustaches armed with shaving mugs ripping a place off while singing "Goodbye, My Coney Island Baby?"<p>New World does list "a group of four people" as the first definition. But, for another example, when I read of a "trio" doing something, I can't get past thinking of the Mills Brothers or the Kingston Trio.<p>This is, like my obsession with "dumped" snow, a silly and unwinnable fight. Just because New World says something is OK doesn't mean go ahead and do it. After all, "bullshit" is in New World, and I have yet to see it in a headline.<p>Now how about that vacation?
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