أَلْفَthousand

Example sentences

• وَلَوْ قُلتُ إِنِّي اِطَّلَعْتُ عِشْرِينَ أَلْفَ مُجَلَّدًا، كَانَ أَكْثَرُ،

  And if I said: 'Indeed I have perused twenty thousand volumes,' it would be more.

  أَلْفَ — thousand. The 'thousand' word stacked onto the previous number to build the larger figure, in the object form because the whole count is the verb's object. Arabic assembles big numbers by chaining such words. It scales the count up before the counted noun arrives.

  From: A Life of Reading and Writing →