Basic Details
Word: Thousand
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: The number 1,000, which is ten hundreds. It is also used loosely to mean a very large number.
How to Spell Thousand
Syllables: thou - sand
Tricky part: The ou sounds like ow, so students write thowsand, and the ending is sand, not send.
Watch out for: thousend, thowsand, thosand
Memory tip: The word ends in sand. Imagine counting a thousand grains of sand on the beach at Puri: thou + sand.
Idioms and Phrases
- a thousand and one: a very large number of Example: "Mummy says she has a thousand and one jobs to finish before the wedding."
Usage Examples
Example 1: The new stadium in our town can seat ten thousand people.
Example 2: A thousand rupees was a lot of money when my grandfather was a boy.
Example 3: The Brihadeeswarar Temple in Thanjavur is more than a thousand years old.
Fun Fact
Thousand goes back to an old Germanic word that probably meant a swollen or big hundred.
Practise the CREST Way
Spell-o-Spell
Read the four words. Choose the meaning of the misspelt word:
1. multitude 2. thousend 3. numerical 4. quantity
a) an amount or number of something
b) a very large crowd of people or things
c) ten hundreds; the number 1,000
d) relating to or shown in numbers
Show answer
c) ten hundreds; the number 1,000. Multitude, numerical and quantity are all spelt right; thousend should end in sand.
Mingle-Mangle
Unjumble the letters in the sentence to form a meaningful word:
The old fort at the top of the hill has more than a dutashon steps cut into the rock.
a) southward
b) thousandth
c) husband
d) thousand
Show answer
d) thousand. Count the letters: eight, with no w or r and only one t, so thousandth and southward are out.
Word Cookie
Find the misspelt word in the sentence:
Our school library now holds more than one thosand books on science, history and art, and every class visits it once a week.
a) thosand
b) science
c) history
d) library
Show answer
a) thosand. The first part of the number is thou, with an o and a u together.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. In the number 5,270, the digit 5 stands in which place?
a) ones
b) tens
c) hundreds
d) thousands
Show answer
d) thousands
2. Which of these is closest to one thousand?
a) 999
b) 100
c) 90
d) 10,000
Show answer
a) 999
