Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary - thousand

(thousands) Frequency: The word is one of the 700 most common words in English. Note: The plural form is 'thousand' after a number, or after a word or expression referring to a number, such as ‘several’ or ‘a few’. 1. A thousand or one thousand is the number 1,000. ...five thousand acres... Visitors can expect to pay about a thousand pounds a day. NUM: usu a/num NUM 2. If you refer to thousands of things or people, you are emphasizing that there are very many of them. Thousands of refugees are packed into over-crowded towns and villages... QUANT: QUANT of pl-n c darkgreen]emphasis • You can also use thousands as a pronoun. Hundreds have been killed in the fighting and thousands made homeless. PRON 3. a thousand and one: see one