215

[cumfy]

Two-fifteen is quarter past two.

Or plausibly CCXV AD.

It is not the time period we will be entering into just over a year.

Where has 2015 been referred to as 215? Never seen/heard that before.

A couple of times now, the last was on Radio 4 Costing the Earth

"There's a real possibility we won't have sufficient power generation in winter 215, 216".

Or words to that effect.

I heard this today too. A gentleman talk about "back in 203". Is this a new thing?

New to me too.

What I find utterly weird is that there is already a perfectly good way of shortening 20xx ..... 'xx.

eg "Back in '03", "winter '15-'16" etc.

It's a 1000-year-old problem. I suspect the whole reason that the English lost the battle of Hastings was that pedants here were distracted arguing about whether it was "one thousand and sixty six" or "ten sixty six", while the French, who were quite clear that it was "mille soixante-six", walked all over us.

However in 1799, unsure whether they were in "dix-sept nonante-neuf" or the much more bizzare but "modern" "dix-neuf quatre-vingt dix-neuf", the Napoleonic armies did pretty badly.

QED, or as we say in English, TWWTHBD.