meaning - How to use "tens of" and "hundreds of"?


If I'm not mistaken, tens of means 10 to 99 and hundreds of means 100 to 999. Is this correct? I found in some dictionaries that tens of is actually not correct.


I also found that hundreds of could also mean any arbitrary large number. So how would people usually interpret hundreds of? Based on context?


In my case, I want to describe numbers of some items that are usually 50-90 but sometimes could be around 100-200, but definitely not as many as 300 or so. I want to really emphasize that there are a lot of these items. In this case, can I say "... have tens or even hundreds of ..."? Would people misinterpret what I actually want to say?



Answer



In English, one would normally say "dozens of" rather than "tens of", so there is some overlap. I might use "dozens of" for an amount between 36 (a dozen, two dozen, dozens...) and 132 (a dozen less than a gross), "scores of" for a number between 40 and 199, and "hundreds of" for values greater than that. I don't think I've ever thought about the reasoning behind this; it would really depend on which number sounded better in the areas which overlap.


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