While it’s technically accurate to describe a crowd of 200,000 as made up of tens of thousands of demonstrators (as is saying it had thousands or hundreds or tens of protestors), that choice of words significantly downplays the magnitude and significance of such an event.

This brings to mind a related example: When asked how long it would take to resolve issues preventing people in the UK from getting tested for COVID-19, health secretary Matt Hancock replied, a matter of weeks. As Andy Zaltzman quips on an episode of The News Quiz, “It’s been a matter of weeks since the Romans invaded. Just over a hundred thousand weeks, but still weeks.”

More banally, a founder’s professional profile reads:

Our company has signed multi-year client agreements with Google and Salesforce.com. On closer inspection, one finds that the company did nothing more than the ordinary task of paying for Google G Suite and Salesforce.com products, on behalf of its customers.

In corporate-speak, we see such statements as:

This quarter, we delivered several solutions that improved performance. Were they