An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/tausend

by Friedrich Kluge

tausend, neuter and masculine, ‘thousand,’ from the equivalent Middle High German tûsend (tûsunt), Old High German tûsunt, dûsunt; corresponding to Gothic þûsundi, Anglo-Saxon þûsend, English thousand, Dutch duizend, Old Saxon thûsind. While the lower numerals up to a hundred are common to all the Aryan languages, the term for a thousand occurs elsewhere only in the Slavonic group; compare Old Slovenian tysąšta, Lithuanian túkstantis. The primary meaning and further history of the Slavonic-Teutonic word tûsntî, tûsontî, can no longer be discovered; perhaps Slavonic borrowed this word in prehistoric times from Teutonic (in Sanscrit sahasra, Zend hazaṅhra, Greek χίλιοι for *χέσλιοι, equivalent to gheslio-; in Latin mîlia, equivalent to Greek μύρια). —