thousand

thou·sand

ten hundred; 1,000; M
an indefinite but very large number: a hyperbolic use

Origin of thousand

Middle English thusend from OE, akin to German tausend from Proto-Germanic an unverified form thus-hundi, “many hundred” from Indo-European base an unverified form t?u-, to swell, increase + Proto-Germanic an unverified form hund-, hundred

amounting to one thousand in number

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MLA Style

"thousand." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 09 April 2019. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/thousand>.

APA Style

thousand. (n.d.). Retrieved April 09th, 2019, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/thousand

thousand

noun

The cardinal number equal to 10 × 100 or 10³.

Origin of thousand

Middle English from Old English thūsend ; see teuə- in Indo-European roots.

Related Forms:

thou′sand
adjective
pron.

THE AMERICAN HERITAGE® DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, FIFTH EDITION by the Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries. Copyright © 2016, 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Link/Cite

Link to this page

Cite this page

MLA Style

"thousand." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 09 April 2019. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/thousand>.

APA Style

thousand. (n.d.). Retrieved April 09th, 2019, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/thousand

Usage notes

Unlike cardinal numerals up to ninety-nine, the word thousand is a noun like dozen and needs a determiner to function as a numeral.

a thousand men / one thousand men / the thousand men
compare a dozen men / one dozen men / the dozen men
compare ten men / the ten men

Thousand can be used also in plurals. It doesn't take -s when preceded by a determiner.

two thousand men / some thousand men
thousands of men / dozens of thousands of men

Origin

From Middle English thousend, thusand, from Old English Ã¾Å«send (“thousand"), from Proto-Germanic *Ã¾Å«sundÄ« (“thousand"). Cognate with Scots thousand (“thousand"), Saterland Frisian duusend (“thousand"), West Frisian tÃ»zen (“thousand"), Dutch duizend (“thousand"), German tausend (“thousand"), Danish tusind (“thousand"), Swedish tusen (“thousand"), Icelandic Ã¾Ãºsund (“thousand").