I was speaking with my husband who is not English as first language, and said to him "I was so confused I coulnt' play 'note one'".

He imeditatly corrected me/questioned me, saying "he coulnd't play one note?" And i replied that it's an expression. As I thought of that particular inverstion, in trying to explain it to him, i determined a few case limiters. But I can't figure out exactly where teh inversion comes from.

1) it is generally only used with limited nouns (note, word, and maybe one or to others).
2) it is often assoicated with "know". He didn't know [word] one. (eg, "he couldn't write word one" doesn't come as naturally to my tongue.
3) I'm pretty sure it is not intended to be Note One, as in "he didn't know note One, but he knew Two, Three and four."
4) it has the "sense" or the "style" of something upper crust to my ear, though often those are creatures of hyper correction (Give the book to her and I - has the 'air' of being educated, since it relies on the mistake use of the pronoun I, and the assocated hyper-corrections).

Anyone have any idea where this particular inversion might come from?