Passim...

It is said that expressions such as "in the first place" derive from mnemonic systems in which the speaker has assigned images of the items to be spoken of to images of various actual places (such as the speaker's own dwelling or other familar location).

I know you can get away with "in the second place," but - moving onward - "in the third place" sounds a bit stilted; generally, at this point, you just use an ordinal number, e.g., "third."

I wonder how far one might reasonably push the ordinals? I figure if you have to go to double-digits, you've probably lost your audience.

Which leads me to a curious formulation that I found in the current text:

Eleventh, and most important,...

That woke me up!

I mean, what kind of drooling idiot would list what he describes as the "most important" point of his talk at the end of nearly a dozen other points?

But hey, I only translate 'em, I don't write 'em.

Cheers...