[harryjo]

> The manuscript is two hundred and twenty-five millimetres tall, a hundred and sixty wide, and five centimetres thick.

"met_re_s" in an American publication?

In this case, it's obviously just the New Yorker spelling out words and mixing scales just to increase word count/diversity to give the article a more mysterious pseudo-intellectual feel, as is the style of the magazine. The New Yorker spins articles through a thesaurus before publication.

See also

> ineluctable

Considering that the venerated New Yorker(!) is blogspamming a Reddit(!) thread, they needed to do something to distinguish themselves from BuzzFeed.

[na85]

>The New Yorker spins articles through a thesaurus before publication.

Perhaps, but there's a reason for the French saying "le mot juste": Synonyms aren't actually words that have the same meaning. They are words that have similar, related meanings but don't actually connote the same thing.

What should they have chosen instead of "ineluctable"? Irresistable? Inevitable? Those words don't really carry the same meaning for me.

Precision in language (spoken, written, programming, or otherwise) is a beautiful thing.

[doug1001]

well the author of the piece is Josephine Livingstone; she might be British. I don't know whether she is; but i do know that i have read article by her in the Guardian which is a leading newspaper published in the UK.