The word hundred and a few other words of higher numbers like thousand, million, and billion stay in the singular form when a number comes before them, even when that number is greater than one:two hundred people, three million soldiers, four thousand planes, five billion dollars.But if no number comes before these words they may be plural:hundreds of people, millions of soldiers, thousands of planes, billions of dollars.
hun•dred(hun′drid),USA pronunciationn., pl.-dreds, (as after a numeral) -dred,adj. n.
a cardinal number, ten times ten.
a symbol for this number, as 100 or C.
a set of this many persons or things:a hundred of the men.
Mathematicshundreds, a number between 100 and 999, as in referring to an amount of money:Property loss was only in the hundreds of dollars.
Informal Terms
a hundred-dollar bill.
the sum of one hundred dollars.
American History, Government(formerly) an administrative division of an English county.
American History, Governmenta similar division in colonial Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia, and in present-day Delaware.
MathematicsAlso called hundred's place.
Mathematics(in a mixed number) the position of the third digit to the left of the decimal point.
Mathematics(in a whole number) the position of the third digit from the right.
adj.
amounting to one hundred in number.
bef. 950; Middle English, Old English (cognate with Old Frisian hundred, Old Saxon hundred, Old Norse hundrath, Dutch honderd, German hundert), equivalent. to hund 100 (cognate with Gothic hund; akin to Latin centum, Greek hekatón, Avestan satəm, Sanskrit śatám, Old Church Slavonic sùto, Lithuanian ŝímtas) + -red tale, count, akin to Gothic rathjan to reckon (see read1)