Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(orig. US) 1,000, esp. dollars.

1854		G.J. Whyte-Melville General Bounce (1891) 189: I should have landed ‘a Thou’ at least.
1869		Sportsman (London) 23 Dec. 2/1: Notes on News [...] About sixty articles are enumerated, the gross value of which must be close upon a ‘thou’.
1874		Leeds Times 26 June 6/2: He’s good for forty thou.
1880		G.R. Sims ‘A Change for the Better’ Ballads of Babylon 127: When a poet had only to praise a peer, To earn a couple of ‘thou’ a year.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 10 Jan. 7/2: She is a young lady with a fairly good figure (it had much improved when she left court after annexing the ten ‘thou.’) who promises to become, in a few years, a squat, matronly-looking person enough.
1890		Sporting Times 15 Feb. 1/2: There’ll be a thou to start with when I come out, and it’s a good hedge.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 18 Mar. 2/7: Matt noo no bounds, / He’d give his ‘thou’.
1897		Worker (Brisbane) 4 Sept. 8/4: To shear a thou. or more a week, which is but seldom done, / Will gain a shearer high respect and title of ‘gun.’.
1900		Punch 4 Apr. 241: You see – I promised to give her a ‘thou’ by way of a dowry – and – ahem – I’m not quite ready with it just now.
1904		Sun. Times (Perth) 14 Feb. 8/2: A plump, well-featured pigeon [...] was clean plucked for a thou. by the smart pokerites.
1911		A. Bennett Card (1974) 226: ‘A couple of thou’,’ said Cotterill, reflectively.
1913		‘J.W.L.’ Slave Stories 13: Then I lay my hands on another thou.
1924		E. Hemingway letter 29 Dec. in Baker Sel. Letters (1981) 141: 85000 crowns a day for full pension and heat 15 or 20 thou extra.
1930		E. Waugh Vile Bodies 189: I’ve got the nice little packet of thirty-five thou. waiting.
1932		D. Hammett ‘Too Many Have Lived’ in Nightmare Town (2001) 317: Sure you didn’t find Eli later that morning [...] swap him bullets for Ferris’s five thou, dump him in the — ?
1944		D. Runyon Runyon à la Carte 128: Fifty thou is undoubtdly a splendid tally.
1958		T. Capote Breakfast at Tiffany’s 93: Once on the coast I helped him win more than ten thou in a single poker hand.
1969		N. Spinrad Bug Jack Barron 23: How many of us in the good old US of A buzz off worth five hundred thou.
1975		‘P.B. Yuill’ Hazell and the Three-card Trick (1977) 98: They’d been asking forty-two thou. He got it for thirty-seven.
1975		E. Torres Carlito’s Way 13: Jakie was into the shylocks for fifty thou.
1981		J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 56: Ten thou apiece to the next of kin.
1983		J. Byrell (con. 1959) Up the Cross 40: ‘Cobber gave us half a thou’.
1990		J. Wambaugh Golden Orange (1991) 107: There must be a hundred thou here.
1996		J. Byrell Lairs, Urgers & Coat-Tuggers 59: [H]ere he was with just on a thou in the Cup Account .
1999		Guardian G2 16 June 11: I agree in principle with adding on a couple of thou.
2000		Hip-Hop Connection Jan. 79: It’s still a waste of time going on about how the 2 Thou is going to be the year for British rap.
2013		D. Whish-Wilson Zero at the Bone [ebook] He’s hit me for three thou [dollars] just this week.
2020		D. Winslow ‘Sunset’ in Broken 206: ‘He’s jamming Duke for three hundred thou’.