Translation
thousand, a thousand
Examples
.
A thousand men were on the plain.
.
Two thousand soldiers came.
.
The kingdom stood for a thousand years.
milibus pugnavit.
He fought with three thousand of the enemy.
.
Thousands of men came into the city.
Mille behaves as two different words depending on number, and this catches people out. In the singular it is an indeclinable adjective sitting straight in front of its noun: "mille homines", a thousand men, with homines doing whatever the sentence needs. In the plural it is a neuter noun of the third declension, milia, milium, milibus, and it takes a partitive genitive: "duo milia hominum" is literally two thousands of men.
The spelling wobbles. Classical texts have milia with one l; medieval scribes double it to millia, and this corpus shows both. A mile is mille passus, a thousand paces, which is where the English word and the Roman milestone both come from.
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mille: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Latin word "mille" (thousand, a thousand): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.
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Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 8.