To me, two hundreds of books or one hundred of books is natural.
Why is “one hundreds” in the picture in plural form?
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Related: english.stackexchange.com/questions/543153/…– ConradoCommented May 1, 2022 at 1:33
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Why use one hundreds rather than one hundred on the note? @nnnnnn– xmllmxCommented May 1, 2022 at 1:50
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9"Two hundreds of books" and "one hundred of books" are both wrong. We just say "two hundred books" or "one hundred books".– TonyKCommented May 1, 2022 at 12:02
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1By the way, “*one hundred of books” is not quite correct. We use “of books” to say that a mass noun consists of books, such as “a lot of books,” “a treasury of books,” or “a collection of books.” A number like “one hundred” would take a count noun, so “one hundred books.” We could, however, say, “one hundred dollars’ worth of books,” since “worth” here is the mass noun, the amount of money is how much of it there is, and “of books” are what it consists of. You might have heard something like that?– DavislorCommented May 1, 2022 at 20:58
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2Maybe the packs should be labelled "hectodollars". :)– chepnerCommented May 2, 2022 at 13:33
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3 Answers
One hundreds (plural) is correct on the label because each individual item in the bundle is a single one hundred - so more than one of them is some number of one hundreds (plural). The point of the label is to identify the denomination of the notes (bills).
The same principle applies to bundles of other denominations, for example a bundle of five dollar notes would be labelled "Fives". Take one note out and you have one five; take two out and you have two fives (plural).
If you withdrew $450 from your bank account you could say to the teller, "please give me three one hundreds, two fifties, and five tens".
To me, two hundreds of books or one hundred of books is natural
We wouldn't say "two hundreds of books", we'd just say "two hundred books". But anyway, that is a different situation where the thing being counted is books, whereas in your picture the thing being collected (not counted) is bank notes each of which is called a one hundred.
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2Yes. How would you like your withdrawal? And you say three hundreds, five twenties, two tens, and a five, for a total of four hundred and twenty-five dollars.– XanneCommented May 1, 2022 at 9:34
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18I wonder if there was potential confusion because $10,000 in hundred dollar bills is one hundred bills. I.e., without seeing other bundles, one might suppose the "One Hundreds" was indicating how many bills in the bundle, in which case "One Hundred" would be appropriate. Commented May 1, 2022 at 12:17
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6Another consideration is that the U.S. Treasury in 1928 put into circulation a $500 bill (with William McKinley as the featured great American), so a particularly wealthy customer might in those days have asked a bank for a large sum of money "in five hundreds" rather than "in one hundreds." Commented May 1, 2022 at 18:21
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4@JoshuaTaylor A complete correct label would be "one hundred hundreds". But apparently the conventional way they distribute bills is by stating the total value and the denomination. So it's "$10,000 in one hundreds". In this case it's a coincidence that the number and denomination are the same.– BarmarCommented May 2, 2022 at 14:32
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2The correct label would have a hyphen. United States one-hundred-dollar bill– MazuraCommented May 2, 2022 at 14:38
What is shown is a stack of one hundred one-hundred-dollar bills. One of them would be a one-hundred-dollar bill. A short name for such a bill is a one-hundred. Thus, a stack of them is a stack of one-hundreds. Probably, the person who designed the label was not into the finer points of punctuation and so omitted the hyphen.
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5@Ben this is known as "semantic satiation", look it up, it's fascinating! Commented May 2, 2022 at 8:09
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These appear to be American banknotes, which look like this (from the U.S. Treasury’s currency education page):
This banknote says “ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS” and is formally called a one-hundred-dollar bill. This is using a slightly unusual term for one: calling a one-hundred dollar bill “a one hundred,” and therefore, a stack of them “one hundreds”. This person would probably call that, “ten thousand dollars in one hundreds,” or “a stack of a hundred one hundreds.”
It would be more common to call them “hundreds,” as in, “I’d like to take out a thousand dollars, in hundreds.” However, something like “five hundreds” might then be ambiguous, as it could be referring to either five notes denominated 100, or to notes denominated 500. (U.S. currency does not happen to have any notes whose denominations would have this problem, but some others such as the Euro do, and foreign travelers might not be as familiar with U.S. currency.) If i had to speculate, that might be why the bank avoided that usage.
This note is called many other slang terms, too. For example, the song and movie from the late ’90s, “All about the Benjamins,” is talking about hundred-dollar bills with Benjamin Franklin’s face on them, which was the largest bill then in circulation (so it’s talking about the lifestyle of someone who carries around large amounts of cash). A Franklin is another, and so is a C-note.
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Was and still is the largest bill in circulation. As @ThePhoton pointed out, there were $500 bills at one time, as well as $1,000, $5,000, $10,000, and even $100,000, but none of these were ever in common use. See Large denominations of United States currency Commented May 2, 2022 at 17:26