þusend
Middle English
Old English
[a], [b], [c] ← 100 | ← 900 | 1,000 | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
100[a], [b], [c] | ||||
Cardinal: þūsend Multiplier: þūsendfeald |
Etymology
From Proto-Germanic *þūsundī.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈθuː.send/, [ˈθuː.zend]
Usage notes
- Where a modern English speaker would say “x hundred and y thousand,” the Anglo-Saxons said “x hundred thousand and y thousand”. For example, 186,000 was hund þūsenda and six and hundeahtatiġ þūsenda, literally “a hundred thousand and eighty-six thousand.”
- The ordinal form of þūsend is unknown, as no word for “thousandth” is attested until Early Modern English. The only likely possibility is *þūsendoþa [ˈθuːzendoθɑ], which would match modern English thousandth, as well as all lower ordinal numbers ending in “twentieth” or higher, which also use the suffix -oþa.
- The gender and declension of þūsend vary widely. The word is often a feminine ō-stem (the inherited declension, since the jō-stems merged with the ō-stems, mostly by regular sound change), often a neuter a-stem, and often undeclined. When undeclined, it can be either feminine or neuter.
- Old English had no word for million. Instead þūsend þūsenda ("a thousand thousand") or þūsend sīðum þūsend ("a thousand times a thousand") were used.
Derived terms
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