On Wednesday, a notification from WordPress that I had achieved
a thousand likes
on this blog since it started late in 2008.
A thousand is a large, generous number, but also one that’s not hard for most people to comprehend; higher amounts are just huge agglomerations, which can be compared but aren’t easily viewed as collections you might easily count — or simply convey ‘some enormous number’.
A few associations for X in “a thousand Xs” or “thousand-X”:
YEARS: “A Thousand Years” (Christina Perri song); the Thousand-Year Reich; a thousand-year stare
KISSES: A Thousand Kisses (South Korean tv show); “A Thousand Kisses Deep” (Leonard Cohen song)
THANKS: a thousand thanks (conventional hyperbolic thanking)
PARDONS: a thousand pardonsI (conventional hyperbolic apology); A Thousand Pardons (Jonathan Dee novel)
ACRES: A Thousand Acres (Jane Smiley novel)
MILES: “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” (proverb attributed to Lao Tzu); “A Thousand Miles” (Vanessa Carlton song)
No doubt there are many many more.
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