The number 1,000, which is ten hundreds. It’s often used to mean a very large amount.
From Old English 'þūsend' meaning 'thousand.' Related forms appear in other Germanic languages, like Old Norse 'þúsund' and German 'tausend.' The word may go back to a Proto‑Germanic form meaning 'swollen hundred,' hinting at 'a big group of hundreds.'
Before calculators, people treated 'thousand' almost like we treat 'million' today—a kind of mind‑stretching big number. That’s why phrases like 'a thousand times' really mean 'a lot,' not a literal count. The word marks a psychological jump in how humans feel about quantity.
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