Etymologically
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thousand

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Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈθaʊ.zənd/[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English thousand,[2][3] inherited from Old English þūsend,[4][5] from Proto-Germanic *thusundi,[4][6] the source also of Old Saxon thūsundig, Old Frisian thūsend, Dutch duizend, Old High German dūsunt, German tausend, Old Norse þúsund and Gothic þūsundi.[4][5] It is reconstructed as *thus-hund-, a compound meaning “swollen hundred, great hundred”,[4][5][7] from Proto-Indo-European *teue- (“to swell”), as in thigh and thumb, and the word that gave hundred.[4][5] It is also found in Balto-Slavic: Lithuanian tūkstantis, Old Church Slavonic tysęšta, Russian tysyacha.[4][5][6] There is no general Indo-European word for thousand;[4] its precise meaning may come from its use to translate Greek khilias and Latin mille.[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old English þūsend about 725, in Beowulf, according to Barnhart;[5] about 893 in the OED.[8]

Semantic evolution

From Old English it was also used for any large, indefinite number.[8][4] Thousandth is from 1552.[5] The slang clipping thou is attested by 1867,[4] Thousand Island dressing (1916) is presumably named after the Thousand Islands on the Saint Lawrence River,[4] and the thousand-yard stare, a blank, unfocused gaze, is military slang by 1943.[4]

Timeline

  • c. 725 – a thousand.[5]
  • c. 1000 – a large number.[8]
  • 1552 – thousandth.[5]
  • 1867 – thou.[4]
  • 1916 – Thousand Island dressing.[4]
  • 1943 – thousand-yard stare.[4]

Modern meaning

Numeral

  1. The cardinal number equal to ten times one hundred; 1,000.

Noun

  1. thousands A very large number: thousands of people.

Word family

  • thousandfold
  • thousandth
  • thousand-legger
  • Thousand Islands

References

  1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  2. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  3. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  6. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  8. ^ a b c Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press