101/Historical Note

Historical Note on $101$ (One Hundred and One)

The number $101$ has several cultural significances.

• The rhetorical device meaning: a large number ($100$) and then some (and $1$), often in the context of book titles:

The Hundred and One Dalmatians, and 101 Uses for a Dead Cat, and so on.

• Room $101$: In Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, room $101$ is the name of the torture chamber where bad things happen. It has entered contemporary consciousness for a rhetorical and metaphorical space into which things are to be consigned which are particularly hated.

• As a metaphor for an entry-level course of study. It is usual, in Western universities, for the first course in the first year of study of a degree, to be provided with the serial number xx$101$, where xx identifies the nature of the study course. Hence it is used rhetorically, often for the purposes of ridicule, to mean basic information which you really ought to know by now.

Oh come on, forgetting to set the timer? That's cooking $101$!