See cast of thousands on Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "Originally used literally, although embellished even then. Its modern-day usage is not restricted to acting.",
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"ref": "1977, James Monaco, How to Read a Film - The Art, Technology, Language, History, and Theory of Film and Media, page 15:",
"text": "For Apocalypse Now (above), Francis Ford Coppola reinvented the Vietnam War with the proverbial cast of thousands.",
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"ref": "1987, United States, Congress, House, Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair - Appendix B, Depositions, Volume 4, page 896:",
"text": "They were trying to keep it down and saying going to Europe, as I recall, but a cast of thousands --- that is incorrect, take that off.",
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"ref": "2016, Judith Flanders, A Cast of Vultures, A Mystery:",
"text": "Life was now just too confusing, so I didn't ask any questions, just headed back to the cast of thousands standing in my kitchen.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A large number of people in one place or carrying out one action."
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"id": "en-cast_of_thousands-en-noun-kSkb0moU",
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"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) A large number of people in one place or carrying out one action."
],
"tags": [
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],
"word": "cast of thousands"
}
{
"etymology_text": "Originally used literally, although embellished even then. Its modern-day usage is not restricted to acting.",
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"ref": "1977, James Monaco, How to Read a Film - The Art, Technology, Language, History, and Theory of Film and Media, page 15:",
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"ref": "1987, United States, Congress, House, Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair - Appendix B, Depositions, Volume 4, page 896:",
"text": "They were trying to keep it down and saying going to Europe, as I recall, but a cast of thousands --- that is incorrect, take that off.",
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"ref": "2016, Judith Flanders, A Cast of Vultures, A Mystery:",
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],
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}
Download raw JSONL data for cast of thousands meaning in All languages combined (2.0kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-09-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-09-02 using wiktextract (ccec6f1 and 4deed51). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.