Tuhansina

Tuhansina is a Finnish adverbial form derived from the noun tuh + at meaning thousand. In ordinary usage, tuhansina expresses a large, approximate quantity and translates roughly to “in thousands” or “thousands of” in English. The form is used to convey scale rather than precise counts, making it common in news reporting, statistics, and descriptive prose.

In practice, tuhansina functions as a way to emphasize magnitude when exact figures are unknown, unnecessary, or intentionally omitted. It can appear in reference to people, quantities, money, time, or other measurable domains, often in combination with a numeral or a general noun phrase. The word helps readers or listeners grasp the scope of an event, trend, or dataset without specifying an exact total.

Tuhansina has related inflected forms that align with Finnish grammar, reflecting case and number. For example, forms such as tuhansia (partitive), tuhansien (genitive plural), or other case-specific variants may be used depending on the sentence structure. These related forms are all built from the same root and serve to express quantity in different grammatical contexts.

Etymologically, tuhansina is connected to tuhat, the basic Finnish word for “thousand.” The dichtomies between exact numerals and approximate expressions are a characteristic feature of Finnish quantification, with tuhansina representing a conventional, non-precise scale.

See also: tuhat, Finnish numerals, quantification in Finnish.