lakh

Plurallakhs, lakh

1. 1
   numeralMyanmarSouth Asia

   One hundred thousand (100,000), written in Indian digit grouping as 1,00,000.

   Voter rolls in the district list more than three lakh names.

   The charity distributed a lakh of meals during the flood relief.

   Note

   A numeral borrowed from Hindustani lākh, from Sanskrit lakṣa, built on a root meaning "to mark" or "to observe." It belongs to South Asian and Burmese English, where the digits are grouped to match: 1,00,000 rather than 100,000. A hundred of them make a crore. Samuel Purchas spelled it Laches in 1613. Its plural can be either lakhs or an unchanged lakh, as in three lakh names.

2. 2
   nounMyanmarSouth Asiacountable

   A sum of one hundred thousand rupees, used as a standard unit of money.

   The startup raised a few lakh from local investors in its first round.

   Her medical bills ran into several lakhs that year.

   Note

   Money is where English travelers first met the word. Thomas Coryat valued a present to the Mughal court at ten "Leakes" in 1615, and Purchas explained in 1625 that every Leck was a hundred thousand rupees. In Thackeray's The Virginians, lakhs stand beside jaghires and gold mohurs in a list of Clive's Indian riches. In use, the currency is left unsaid: a few lakh simply means rupees.

3. 3
   nounfigurativelyMyanmarSouth Asiacountable

   An indefinitely large number; a countless multitude.

   Lakhs of questions raced through his mind as he waited for the verdict.

   He owed a lakh of favors to the friends who helped him move.

   Similargazillion, billion, jillion, bazillion, gajillion

   Note

   Here the number stops counting and starts exaggerating, much as English speakers elsewhere say zillions. It belongs to South Asian and Burmese English, usually in the plural with of: lakhs of questions, lakhs of favors. Older writing spells it lac: in 1804 Robert Montgomery Martin quotes Yashwantrao Holkar warning of calamities falling on "lacs of human beings." The Laccadives, the "lac of islands," carry the same loose sense, unlike the exact hundred thousand.

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