Word.ws English Dictionary

hundreds and thousands

Syllables: hun·dreds and thou·sandsUK/ˌhʌndɹəds n̩ ˈθaʊz(ə)ndz/US/ˌhʌndɹəds n̩ ˈθaʊz(ə)n(d)z/

hundreds and thousands noun: an indefinite but emphatically large number.

hundreds and thousands: an indefinite but emphatically large number
Image: deb, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

hundreds and thousands pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) An indefinite but emphatically large number.
    • I myself have seen in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, hundreds and thousands of women and children fleeing from your armies and desperadoes, hungry, and with bleeding feet.1864 September 12, W. T. Sherman, letter to James M. Calhoun, E. E. Rawson and S. C. Wells, representing City Council of Atlanta, published in 1865, Joel Tyler Headley, Grant and Sherman: Their...
    • Have there not been hundreds and thousands of people injured in the depression in value of railroad securities?1901, United States Congress, Congressional Edition, volume 4338, page 167
  2. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, plural, plural-only) Tiny balls or strands of multicoloured sugar, sprinkled over ice cream, desserts or party foods.
    • So there you have them - Onoda, Gund, Eclipse - all squidged together on the same spoon, their flavours intermingling under a bleeding crust of hundreds-and-thousands.2003, Neil Wills, “Surfers′ Paradise”, in Third Way, page 12
    • Hundreds and thousands, commonly yet boringly called “sprinkles” in North America, are enough to make any child smile. Sprinkled over a cookie and sandwiched around creamy ice cream makes for sheer bliss!2007, Pippa Cuthbert, Lindsay Cameron Wilson, Cookies!, New Holland Publishers (UK), archived from the original on 17 Sep 2016, page 96
    Synonyms:
    nonpareil, nonpareils, sprinkles, jimmies, spreckles, sugar strands

hundreds and thousands meaning in Tamil, Kannada and Arabic

hundreds and thousands in Tamil

எண்ணற்ற, எண்ணற்றவை, எண்ணற்றோர், பல்லாயிரக் கணக்கான

hundreds and thousands in Kannada

ಸಾವಿರಾರು

hundreds and thousands in Arabic

indefinite but emphatically large number
آلافٌ مُؤَلَّفَة ʔālāfun muʔallafa

Synonyms of hundreds and thousands

Forms of hundreds and thousands

alternative form100s and 1000s
alternative form100s & 1000s

Origin of hundreds and thousands

PIE word *ḱm̥tóm From hundreds + and + thousands. Sense 2 (“tiny balls or strands of multicoloured sugar”) is from the fact that the confectionery is made up of numerous sugar pieces.

Questions about hundreds and thousands

What does hundreds and thousands mean?
Hundreds and thousands means an indefinite but emphatically large number.
What is hundreds and thousands in Tamil?
Hundreds and thousands in Tamil is எண்ணற்ற, எண்ணற்றவை, எண்ணற்றோர். See Hundreds and thousands meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is hundreds and thousands?
Hundreds and thousands is a noun.
How do you pronounce hundreds and thousands?
Hundreds and thousands is pronounced /ˌhʌndɹəds n̩ ˈθaʊz(ə)ndz/ (UK).

Words near hundreds and thousands in the dictionary

  1. hundredmen
  2. hundredodd
  3. hundredor
  4. hundredors
  5. hundreds
  6. hundreds and thousands
  7. hundreds of thousands
  8. hundredsome
  9. hundredsomething
  10. hundredth
  11. hundredth monkey

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hundreds and thousands (page history and authors); hundreds and thousands (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hundreds and thousands (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-hundreds and thousands.oga.

Cite this entry: “hundreds and thousands.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hundreds_and_thousands. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.