A thousand thanks

On reaching a subscription milestone.

Have you noticed that while English-speakers say “thanks a million,” speakers of some other languages say “thousand thanks”? Italian: mille grazie. Swedish: tusen tack. Norwegian: tusen takk. Irish Gaelic: míle buíochas.

Are the Irish, the Italians, and the Scandinavians more realistic? Are speakers of English too grandiose?¹

Discuss in the comments, if you like.

Meanwhile, a thousand thanks — heck, ten thousand thanks — to all 1,000-plus of you who, over the last eleven months, have signed up to receive and, I hope, read this newsletter.

Fritinancy is still 100 percent free. (I may change my mind if I get to 2,000 subscribers . . .) But if you’re feeling generous, you can buy me a coffee or three. Or a thousand!

1. Here’s your fun language fact: Grand has meant “a thousand dollars” for more than a century. It was originally U.S. underworld slang, presumably because a thousand dollars was “large” (grand) money. The OED’s earliest citation is from the Boston Globe in December 1915: “You can lose a ‘nickel note’ of five dollars, a dime note of ten, a ‘C’ a hundred, or a ‘grand’, a thousand dollars.” Early usages sometimes pluralized grand: “‘A hundred and fifty grands!’ I breathed. ‘You’re cuckoo’” (Collier’s, March 26, 1921). A grand can also be a thousand British pounds.