English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
A thousands year old tradition
"a thousand year old" tradition, would mean only a 1000 years, but I'm not sure we could use the plural form in this expression.
I'm looking for an adjective that would means several thousand years.
"ancient" would NOT be precise enough
It’s a tradition thousands of years old.
It’s a several–thousand-year-old tradition.
It’s a many–thousand-year-old tradition.
It has been a tradition for thousands of years.
You could also use the adjective multi-millenial, but that sounds more formal/literary.
A millenium is an era of a thousand years. Its plural form is millenia, so "millenia-old" is one possibility.
