thousand
Americannoun
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thousands,
plural
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thousand
plural
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a cardinal number, 10 times 100.
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a symbol for this number, as 1000 or M.
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thousands. the numbers between 1000 and 999,999, as in referring to an amount of money.
Property damage was in the thousands.
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a great number or amount.
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Also thousand's place
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(in a mixed number) the position of the fourth digit to the left of the decimal point.
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(in a whole number) the position of the fourth digit from the right.
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adjective
noun
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the cardinal number that is the product of 10 and 100 See also number
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a numeral, 1000, 10³, M, etc, representing this number
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(often plural) a very large but unspecified number, amount, or quantity
they are thousands of miles away
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(plural) the numbers 2000–9999
the price of the picture was in the thousands
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the amount or quantity that is one hundred times greater than ten
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something represented by, representing, or consisting of 1000 units
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maths the position containing a digit representing that number followed by three zeros
in 4760, 4 is in the thousand's place
determiner
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amounting to a thousand
a thousand ships
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( as pronoun )
a thousand is hardly enough
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amounting to 1000 times a particular scientific unit
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
Etymology
Origin of thousand
before 900; Middle English; Old English thūsend; cognate with Dutch duizend, Old High German dūsunt, Old Norse thūsund, Gothic thūsindi
Vocabulary lists containing thousand
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“For every large public company CEO, more than one thousand private business owners have at least $25 million in wealth,” they write.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 25, 2026
French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said that "several thousand radical activists gathered at the rear of the march, including around 500 individuals identified as rioters", the AFP news agency reported.
From BBC ● Oct. 24, 2026
Ticket prices range from 20 to 90 yuan, bringing the number sold to a few thousand at most.
From Barron's ● Oct. 23, 2026
"A researcher might be able to examine a few thousand Reddit posts by hand, but looking at nearly 150,000 would be an enormous undertaking," says Sehgal.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 22, 2026
“I wish we could, but for the thousand reasons I’ve already told you a thousand times, we can’t.”
From "Red Flags and Butterflies" by Sheryl Azzam
This week, thousands demonstrated in Caracas and other cities, demanding her return from exile in Panama.
From Barron's ● Oct. 25, 2026
Audi sells thousands of luxury cars in the U.S. without building a single one here.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 25, 2026
People living thousands of miles apart have reported an extraordinarily strange experience after eating certain wild mushrooms.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 25, 2026
Evidence was given by charities including Action for Children, who paid for Sabrina's new bed and provides financial support to thousands of low income families in Wales each year.
From BBC ● Oct. 24, 2026
The artwork within them was tens of thousands of years old and included animals that had long been extinct.
From "The Unseen Guest" by Maryrose Wood
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