The following excerpt is from an article about Obama’s famous 2004 speech.
‘He seemed to have somewhere between eight and 12 seconds of political nicety in him for everyone before he would declare what he would rather be doing (“I need a nap”) and move on.’
In this context, what’s the meaning of ‘eight and twelve seconds’?
I think you're confused because "Seconds" are "time" but the word "Somewhere" is used in the sentence instead of "When" or "Somewhen".
When I was a beginner at English, I thought that "Somewhere" or "where" are used for real or physical places only (e.g. This is the city where I born) but after some time, I realized that it can also be used for unreal places (e.g. I was in a situation where I had to run away) and a good example would be your sentence too.
What does the phrase somewhere between 8 and 12 seconds mean?
We often speak of numbers as if they were on a physical scale, like a ruler or yardstick. In that sentence, a range of time, a duration, is being expressed spatially, and so you find the phrase somewhere between, which means at some location that is found between those two (temporal) points.
The word somewhere means "at some location". The exact location is not specified. It is intentionally vague or indefinite.
He would be polite for a brief time, approximately 10 seconds, give or take a couple of seconds, and then he would say how he truly felt.
P.S. I don't mean to imply that the speaker visualizes a ruler, but that we easily transpose time into the linear. We speak of timelines and say things like "It happened at some point between last Thursday evening and now".
In this context, "seconds" are the units of time, not "second helpings" nor "second-rate goods".
By the way, all of these terms are derived from 2's ordinal number. The unit of time is the result of a "second" division of an hour into 60 parts. An hour consists of 60 minutes. A minute consists of 60 seconds.
