O/P term for one thousand

Jan F. Ullrich jfu at centrum.cz
Wed Jan 18 19:41:42 UTC 2006


Hi David,

> This is purely anecdotal, but some of you word sleuths out 
> there might be able to pursue it.  Somewhere, somehow, once 
> upon a time I heard that the Native American words for 
> 'thousand' often had something to do with cash boxes in which 
> silver dollars (or maybe gold pieces) were shipped.  If 
> that's true, using 'box' for 1000 might have developed that way.

This is interesting. 
It makes me wonder if perhaps the Lakota word for khokta' - 'thousand'
originates from khoka' - 'wood box, keg, barrel'


Jan



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