hundred

[ huhn-drid ]

/ ˈhʌn drɪd /

SEE MORE SYNONYMS FOR hundred ON THESAURUS.COM

noun, plural hun·dreds, (as after a numeral) hun·dred.

a cardinal number, ten times ten.

a symbol for this number, as 100 or C.

a set of this many persons or things: a hundred of the men.

hundreds, a number between 100 and 999, as in referring to an amount of money: Property loss was only in the hundreds of dollars.

Informal.

a hundred-dollar bill.
the sum of one hundred dollars.

(formerly) an administrative division of an English county.

a similar division in colonial Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia, and in present-day Delaware.

Also called hundred's place. Mathematics.

(in a mixed number) the position of the third digit to the left of the decimal point.
(in a whole number) the position of the third digit from the right.

adjective

amounting to one hundred in number.

Nearby words

hunchback, hunchback of notre dame, the, hunchbacked, hunched, hund., hundred, hundred and eighty degree turn, hundred days, hundred flowers, hundred years war, hundred years' war

Idioms

keep it one hundred, Slang. to remain completely genuine or authentic; be totally honest or truthful. Also keep it 100.

Origin of hundred

before 950; Middle English, Old English (cognate with Old Frisian hundred, Old Saxon hundred, Old Norse hundrath, Dutch honderd, German hundert), equivalent to hund “a hundred” (cognate with Gothic hund; akin to Latin centum, Greek hekatón, Avestan satəm, Sanskrit śatám, Old Church Slavonicsŭto, Lithuanian šímtas) + -red “tale, count,” from Germanic rath, akin to Gothic rathjō “number, account” (see read¹)

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Examples from the Web for hundred

A hundred ultra-wealthy liberal and conservative donors have taken over the political system.
The 100 Rich People Who Run America|Mark McKinnon|January 5, 2015|DAILY BEAST
A running joke inside the tribe is that the group is like that club with a hundred people waiting outside to get in.
‘We Out Here’: Inside the New Black Travel Movement|Charlise Ferguson|January 4, 2015|DAILY BEAST
And of course, Rod, being Rod, goes for it a hundred percent; his mouth drops open and he says, ‘What?’
The Story Behind Lee Marvin’s Liberty Valance Smile|Robert Ward|January 3, 2015|DAILY BEAST
He carried around a hundred pounds too many most of his life, a great buffer of flesh between himself and the world.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Fade to Black: The Great Director’s Final Days|David Freeman|December 13, 2014|DAILY BEAST

His photography has won more than a hundred awards, including the prestigious Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Magazine Photography.
The Best Coffee Table Books of 2014|Robert Birnbaum|December 13, 2014|DAILY BEAST
It sounded like a hundred painters were fightin' to the death.
Scouting with Daniel Boone|Everett T. Tomlinson
Toward the end of the hundred hours Jackson, the prison doctor, examined my physical condition several times.
The Jacket (The Star-Rover)|Jack London
But who could help it, when there were an hundred judges on the bench?
The Jest Book|Mark Lemon
Better kill a hundred friends, he thought, than be captured by a single pirate.
The Monster Men|Edgar Rice Burroughs
Great valleys opened out, dotted with mimosa patches and baobab, and half a hundred varieties of shrubbery.
Haviland's Chum|Bertram Mitford

British Dictionary definitions for hundred

hundred

/ (ˈhʌndrəd) /

noun plural -dreds or -dred

the cardinal number that is the product of ten and ten; five scoreSee also number (def. 1)

a numeral, 100, C, etc, representing this number

(often plural) a large but unspecified number, amount, or quantitythere will be hundreds of people there

the hundreds

the numbers 100 to 109the temperature was in the hundreds
the numbers 100 to 199his score went into the hundreds
the numbers 100 to 999the price was in the hundreds

(plural) the 100 years of a specified centuryin the sixteen hundreds

something representing, represented by, or consisting of 100 units

maths the position containing a digit representing that number followed by two zerosin 4376, 3 is in the hundred's place

an ancient division of a county in England, Ireland, and parts of the US

determiner

amounting to or approximately a hundreda hundred reasons for that
(as pronoun)the hundred I chose

amounting to 100 times a particular scientific quantitya hundred volts

Related formsRelated prefix: hecto-

Word Origin for hundred

Old English; related to Old Frisian hunderd, Old Norse hundrath, German hundert, Gothic hund, Latin centum, Greek hekaton

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for hundred

hundred

Old English hundred "the number of 100, a counting of 100," from West Germanic *hundrath (cf. Old Norse hundrað, German hundert); first element is Proto-Germanic *hundam "hundred" (cf. Gothic hund, Old High German hunt), from PIE *km-tom "hundred," reduced from *dkm-tom- (cf. Sanskrit satam, Avestan satem, Greek hekaton, Latin centum, Lithuanian simtas, Old Church Slavonic suto, Old Irish cet, Breton kant "hundred"), from *dekm- "ten" (see ten).

Second element is Proto-Germanic *rath "reckoning, number" (cf. Gothic raþjo "a reckoning, account, number," garaþjan "to count;" see read (v.)). The common word for the number in Old English was simple hund, and Old English also used hund-teontig.

In Old Norse hundrath meant 120, that is the long hundred of six score, and at a later date, when both the six-score hundred and the five-score hundred were in use, the old or long hundred was styled hundrath tolf-roett ... meaning "duodecimal hundred," and the new or short hundred was called hundrath ti-rætt, meaning "decimal hundred." "The Long Hundred and its use in England" was discussed by Mr W.H. Stevenson, in 1889, in the Archcæological Review (iv. 313-27), where he stated that amongst the Teutons, who longest preserved their native customs unimpaired by the influence of Latin Christianity, the hundred was generally the six-score hundred. The short hundred was introduced among the Northmen in the train of Christianity. ["Transactions" of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, 1907]

Meaning "division of a county or shire with its own court" (still in some British place names and U.S. state of Delaware) was in Old English and probably represents 100 hides of land. The Hundred Years War (which ran intermittently from 1337 to 1453) was first so called in 1874. The original Hundred Days was the period between Napoleon's restoration and his final abdication in 1815.

Idioms and Phrases with hundred

hundred

see by the dozen (hundred).

hundred