hundreds and thousands

English

WOTD – 15 October 2022

Etymology

PIE word
*ḱm̥tóm

Hundreds and thousands (sense 2), also known as nonpareils, on a chocolate drop.

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.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌhʌndɹəds n̩ ˈθaʊz(ə)ndz/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌhʌndɹəds n̩ ˈθaʊz(ə)n(d)z/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: hun‧dreds and thou‧sands

Noun

hundreds and thousands pl (plural only)

1. An indefinite but emphatically large number.
   • 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 Campaigns and Generals, 2008, page 592,

     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.

   • 1901, United States Congress, Congressional Edition‎^[1], volume 4338, page 167:

     Have there not been hundreds and thousands of people injured in the depression in value of railroad securities?

   • 1949, A.S. Altekar, State and Government in Ancient India, reprinted 2001, page 148,

     It is clear that the sentence rather refers to numerous favours conferred upon the city and country population, the monetary value of which amounted to hundreds and thousands of rupees or contemporary coins.

2. (UK, Ireland, Commonwealth) Tiny balls or strands of multicoloured sugar, sprinkled over ice cream, desserts or party foods.

   Synonyms: (US) nonpareil, nonpareils, (US) sprinkles; see also Thesaurus:sprinkles

   • 2003, Neil Wills, “Surfers′ Paradise”, in Third Way‎^[2], page 12:

     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.

   • 2007, Pippa Cuthbert, Lindsay Cameron Wilson, Cookies!‎^[3], New Holland Publishers (UK), archived from the original on 17 September 2016, page 96:

     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!

Alternative forms

• 100s and 1000s, 100s & 1000s

Translations

indefinite but emphatically large number

• Arabic: آلافٌ مُؤَلَّفَة m pl (ʔālāfun muʔallafa)
• Italian: centinaia di migliaia f pl

tiny balls or strands of multicoloured sugar — see sprinkles

See also

• dollarette
• fairy bread
• freckle

Further reading

• nonpareils on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• sprinkles on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• hundreds and thousands (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “hundreds and thousands” under “hundred, adj. and n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, June 2022.
• “hundreds and thousands, plural n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.