thousand

American  

[thou-zuhnd] / ˈθaʊ zənd /

noun

thousands, plural thousand plural

1. a cardinal number, 10 times 100.

2. a symbol for this number, as 1000 or M.

3. thousands. the numbers between 1000 and 999,999, as in referring to an amount of money.

   Property damage was in the thousands.

4. a great number or amount.

5. Also thousand's place

   1. (in a mixed number) the position of the fourth digit to the left of the decimal point.

   2. (in a whole number) the position of the fourth digit from the right.

---

adjective

1. amounting to 1000 in number.

thousand British  

/ ˈθaʊzənd /

noun

1. the cardinal number that is the product of 10 and 100 See also number

2. a numeral, 1000, 10³, M, etc, representing this number

3. (often plural) a very large but unspecified number, amount, or quantity

   they are thousands of miles away

4. (plural) the numbers 2000–9999

   the price of the picture was in the thousands

5. the amount or quantity that is one hundred times greater than ten

6. something represented by, representing, or consisting of 1000 units

7. maths the position containing a digit representing that number followed by three zeros

   in 4760, 4 is in the thousand's place

---

determiner

1. 1. amounting to a thousand

      a thousand ships

   2. ( as pronoun )

      a thousand is hardly enough

2. amounting to 1000 times a particular scientific unit

thousand Idioms  

1. see bat a thousand; by the dozen (thousand); one in a million (thousand); picture is worth a thousand words.

---

Usage

What does thousand mean? A thousand is a number equal to 10 times 100. In numerals, it’s 1,000 or 1000. The word thousand is almost always preceded by the word a (as in a thousand, which means the same thing as 1,000) or by another number, as in two thousand (2,000), ten thousand (10,000), or nine hundred ninety-nine thousand (999,000). You wouldn’t say “I have thousand dollars”—you would say “I have a thousand dollars” or “I have one thousand dollars.”In the context of math, the range of numbers between 1,000 and 999,999 is called the thousands (just as the range between 100 and 999 is called the hundreds). In general, the plural form thousands typically refers to a large but unspecified number or amount somewhere in the thousands, as in The repairs will cost thousands of dollars. Generally, this means between 2,000 and 9,999. The term tens of thousands could be used for a higher amount (typically between 10,000 and 99,999). The phrase the thousands can also be used to refer to a large number or amount without giving the exact total, as in I don’t know how many people were at the concert, but it had to be in the thousands. Thousand and thousands are also often used to exaggerate the number or amount of something, as in I heard about a thousand excuses from my students today or I have thousands of things I need to get done. In Roman numerals, the number one thousand is represented by the letter M. Example: There must have been a thousand people playing in the park today.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• thousand
  plural
• thousands
  plural

Etymology

Origin of thousand

before 900; Middle English; Old English thūsend; cognate with Dutch duizend, Old High German dūsunt, Old Norse thūsund, Gothic thūsindi

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

thousand thousands

Firefighters made some progress taming the flames, allowing several thousand people to return to their homes on Tuesday.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026

The segment was titled Ceud Míle Fáilte - Scottish-Gaelic for "a hundred thousand welcomes".

From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026

This repeated scattering allows the signals to travel for several thousand kilometers.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 18, 2026

It's a well-oiled machine, kicked into overdrive by a war more than a thousand kilometres away.

From Barron's ● Jul. 18, 2026

Nearly a thousand leprosy patients have gathered on this warm Saturday, and they’re all waiting for her.

From "At Last She Stood" by Erin Entrada Kelly

Train services were suspended and electricity cut off for thousands of homes.

From BBC ● Jul. 29, 2026

The intrusion was first detected by Hugging Face last week, when it noticed tens of thousands of AIs nipping at its system.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2026

The 7.1-magnitude quake struck the southwestern region of Kumamoto prefecture on Kyushu island on Tuesday afternoon, causing widespread damage, sparking fires and leaving tens of thousands of homes without power.

From Barron's ● Jul. 29, 2026

Tens of thousands of plaintiffs lined up to sue, though science hasn’t proven a causal link between talc products and cancer.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026

The first morning of the conference, they’d followed a crowd of thousands out of the casino and into the vast main ballroom to attend the opening ceremony.

From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis