what, would you say, does the figure of speech "years" (hours, days, months) imply?

[catbert]

I was always under the impression that in a sentence like "Oh, but that was years ago!", the word "years" signifies a fairly substantial number of years, at the very least more than five.

Then somebody told me that anything two or over could be expressed this way.

I don't know, though, saying "years" when it's only two or three just doesn't sound right to me.

Am I mistaken about this?

[5jj]

I was always under the impression that in a sentence like "Oh, but that was years ago!", the word "years" signifies a fairly substantial number of years, at the very least more than five.

Then somebody told me that anything two or over could be expressed this way.

You are correct; the 'somebody' is not.