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.

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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

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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.

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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

Squamous cell oesophageal cancer is rare, affecting a few thousand people a year.

From BBC ● Sep. 8, 2026

"Death by a thousand cuts has been going on under the nose of successive governments," she said over the weekend.

From BBC ● Sep. 7, 2026

Then there are the cases where a patient pays several thousand dollars, only to learn they owe thousands more.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 6, 2026

With the Finnish border, and any hope of safety, more than a thousand miles away, he wants to keep Troy away from Red Army forces that are undoubtedly searching for him.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026

The door began moving, slowly this time, like it was an ancient boulder covered with a thousand years of moss.

From "Found" by Margaret Peterson Haddix

“These deer have become beloved to many of the islanders, as well as the thousands of tourists who descend on Catalina Island every year,” she told The Times last month.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 10, 2026

These events are marked by unusually warm Pacific waters but raise the odds of wild weather thousands of miles away, from floods in Peru to droughts in Africa and wildfires in Australia.

From Barron's ● Sep. 10, 2026

This is one of thousands of videos on TikTok and Instagram suggesting that people change their workouts depending on where they are in their menstrual cycles - something known as 'cycle-syncing'.

From BBC ● Sep. 9, 2026

Now multiply that risk by tens of thousands of users.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026

By early June the subprime mortgage bond market had resumed what would become an uninterrupted decline, and the FrontPoint positions began to move—first by thousands and then by millions of dollars a day.

From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis