þusend

Old English

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *þūsundī.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈθuː.send/, [ˈθuː.zend]

Numeral

þūsend

1. thousand

Usage notes

• Where a modern English speaker would say "x hundred and x thousand," the Anglo-Saxons said "x hundred thousand and x thousand". 186,000 was hund þūsend and six and hundeahtatiġ þūsend, literally "a hundred thousand and eighty-six thousand".

• The ordinal form of þūsend is unknown, as no word for "thousandth" is attested until the Early Modern English period. 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.

Derived terms

• þūsendfeald

Descendants

• Middle English: thusend, thusand, thousend
  • English: thousand
    • → Hawaiian: kaukani, tausani
  • Scots: thowsand, thousand