a hundred times
57
2.5
- idiom
:
cien veces
- You walk that single block as you have over a hundred times before.
- a hundred times more
- a hundred times less
Examples
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Have I not said this a hundred times?
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I've been up and down your road a hundred times trying to catch you.
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You have seen me with it a hundred times.
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I said I was sorry a hundred times.
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If you wrote that once, you wrote it a hundred times.
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Compared to the computers we have today, future computers will be a hundred times more powerful.
Academic text (2000) -
I guarantee you that would make her a hundred times more loyal.
Fiction book (1996) -
I've told you this a hundred times.
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There is only one picture of her, but I have stared at it a hundred times.
Fiction book (1996) -
I've told you about this a hundred times.
Synonyms
One hundred times as much as before
Antonyms
How Many Times
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'by a multiple of one hundred' is directly and compositionally derived from 'a' (indefinite article) + 'hundred' (the numeral 100) + 'times' (occurrences/multiplicative marker), so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words will understand it as ‘one hundred occurrences/multiples’. This numeric, compositional pattern is cross-linguistically common and can be used literally or hyperbolically, so the expression is immediately comprehensible from its parts.
Etymology
A hundred times paints a simple picture: think of one thing being copied again and again until you have a hundred, or an action done a hundred separate times. So, the phrase is used to say 'one hundred times as much' or 'one hundred repetitions'.