hundred
hundred
/ˈhʌndrəd/
1 100
One hundred (of the children) have already been placed with foster families.
There were just a hundred of them there.
This vase is worth several hundred dollars.
She must be over a hundred (= a hundred years old).
Hundreds of thousands of people are at risk.
a hundred-year lease
You say a, one, two, several, etc. hundred without a final ‘s’ on ‘hundred’. Hundreds (of…) can be used if there is no number or quantity before it. Always use a plural verb with hundred or hundreds, except when an amount of money is mentioned: Four hundred (people) are expected to attend. • Two hundred (pounds) was withdrawn from the account.
2 a hundred, hundreds (of…) (usually informal) a large amount
hundreds of miles away
for hundreds of years
If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times.
I have a hundred and one things to do.
(formal) Men died in their hundreds.
3 the hundreds plural the numbers from 100 to 999 We're talking about a figure in the low hundreds.
4 the… hundreds plural the years of a particular century the early nineteen hundreds (= written ‘early 1900s’)
5 one, two, three, etc. hundred hours used to express whole hours in the 24-hour system
twelve hundred hours (= 12.00 midday)
Idioms
Word Origin
late Old English, from hund ‘hundred’ (from an Indo-European root shared with Latin centum and Greek hekaton) + a second element meaning ‘number’; of Germanic origin and related to Dutch honderd and German hundert.
e.g.