Clauson (1972)
An etimological dictionary of pre-thirteenth-century Turkish
p. 507-508
F tümen
properly ‘ten thousand’, but often used for ‘an indefinitely large number’; immediately borrowed from Tokharian, where the forms are A tmān; B tmane, tumane, but Prof. Pulleyblank has told me orally that he thinks this word may have been borrowed in its turn fr. a Proto-Chinese form *tman, or the like, of wan ‘ten thousand’ (Giles 12,486). It became an early l.-w. in Mong. as tüme(n) (Haenisch 154) and in Pe. as tümān and other foreign languages, see Doerfer II 983, where the word is discussed at great length. S.i.s.m.l., but in some, perhaps a reborrowing fr. Pe. or Mong. Türkü viii bir tümen artukı: yeti: biŋ ‘17,000’ II S 1; a.o.o. for ‘10,000’; bir tümen ağı: ‘innumerable precious things’ I N 12: viii ff. (one spiraea became a hundred, a hundred a thousand) miŋ tavılku: tümen boltı: ‘a thousand spiraeas became ten thousand’ IrkB 32: Man. yüz artukı kırk tümen yek ‘1,400,000 demons’ Chuas. I 12: Uyğ. viii [ü]ç tümen ‘30,000’ Şu. W 7; in biŋ yunt tümen ko:n ‘a thousand horses and ten thousand sheep’ do. W 9(?) and side (ETY I 182) the word is not intended to be precise: viii ff. Man.-A sansız tümen yıl boltı ‘it has been countless myriads of years’ (since we departed from you) M I 10, 4-5: Bud. PP 1, 5 (özlüg) a.o.o., nearly always for ‘an indefinitely large number’: Civ. the irrevocable sale of a property is often described as miŋ yıl tümen künke tegi ‘for a thousand years and ten thousand days’ USp. 13, 10 etc. (the phr., which also occurs in viii Şu. E 9, is prob. taken from Chinese): Xak. xi tümen al-kaṯīr ‘much, many’ of anything; one says tümen törlüg sö:zle:di: ‘he talked volubly on every kind of subject’: tümen miŋ alf alf fi’l-‘adad ‘a million’; one says tümen miŋ yarma:k ‘a million dirhams’ (sic) Kaş. I 402; tüme:n (sic) çeçek ‘all kinds (anwā‘) of flowers’ I 233, 26; (scorpions, flies, and snakes) dük miŋ kayu tümenler ‘in innumerable quantities’ III 367, 10: KB tümen ‘an indefinitely large number’ is common, e.g. tümen miŋ törüttüg bu sansız tirig ‘Thou hast created these innumerable living beings’ 21; o.o. 2, 22, 84, 159, 172, etc.: xiii(?) At. (this world looks nice from the outside, but within it are) tümen nā-xwuşı ‘innumerable unpleasantnesses’ 218: Çağ. xv ff. tümen an expression for ‘a large number’ (çokluk); also on biŋ miqdārı ‘Oṯmān akçası ‘a sum of ten thousand Osmanli small silver coins’ Vel. 220 (quotn.); tümen ‘10,000’; and the Mongols call an amir with an army of 10,000 mīr-i tümen; and the people of Persia call ‘10,000 dinars’ yak tümān San. 185r. 14: Xwar. xiv tümen in both senses Qutb 190: Kom. xiv ‘10,000’ tümen CCG; Gr.: Kıp. xiv tümen al-badra ‘a sum of 10,000 dirhams’ İd. 40; dümen ‘10,000’; also called tümen do. 50: Osm. xiv-xvi tümen in both senses, fairly common TTS I 705; II 911; III 692.