number [ME] The source of number, and of enumerate [E17th] and numerous [ME], is the Latin word numerus. The first written use of your number is up was by the English essayist Charles Lamb in a letter written in 1804, in which the reference is to someone drawing a winning ticket in the ‘lottery of despair’. Other suggestions have been made as to the phrase’s origins. One links it to various passages in the Bible that refer to the ‘number of your days’, meaning the length of your life. Another proposes that the number in question is a soldier’s army number, associated with identifying casualties on the battlefield and the fatalistic expectation of a bullet with ‘your name and number’ on it.