thread
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
From Middle English thred, þred, threed, from Old English þrǣd, from Proto-Germanic *þrēduz, from Proto-Indo-European *treh₁-tu-s, from *terh₁- (“rub, twist”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Träid (“thread, wire”), West Frisian tried, Dutch draad, German Draht, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish tråd, and Icelandic þráður. Non-Germanic cognates include Albanian dredh (“twist, turn”). More at throw.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /θɹɛd/
- (General American) IPA(key): [θɾ̪̊ɛd]
Audio (US): (file) - Rhymes: -ɛd
- Hyphenation: thread
Noun
thread (plural threads)
- A long, thin and flexible form of material, generally with a round cross-section, used in sewing, weaving or in the construction of string.
- 1922, Michael Arlen, “Ep./1/2”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days:
- He walked. To the corner of Hamilton Place and Picadilly, and there stayed for a while, for it is a romantic station by night. The vague and careless rain looked like threads of gossamer silver passing across the light of the arc-lamps.
- A continued theme or idea.
- Synonym: topic
- All of these essays have a common thread.
- I’ve lost the thread of what you’re saying.
- (engineering) A screw thread.
- A sequence of connections.
- 1847, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Chapter XVIII:
- I was pondering these things, when an incident, and a somewhat unexpected one, broke the thread of my musings.
- 1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula, Chapter 21:
- ‘Let him go on. Do not interrupt him. He cannot go back, and maybe could not proceed at all if once he lost the thread of his thought.’
- The line midway between the banks of a stream.
- (computing) A unit of execution, lighter in weight than a process, usually sharing memory and other resources with other threads executing concurrently.
- (Internet) A series of messages, generally grouped by subject, in which all messages except the first are replies to previous messages in the thread.
- A filament, as of a flower, or of any fibrous substance, as of bark.
- (figurative) Composition; quality; fineness.
- 1632 (first performance), Benjamin Jonson [i.e., Ben Jonson], “The Magnetick Lady: Or, Humors Reconcil’d. A Comedy […]”, in The Workes of Benjamin Jonson. The Second Volume. […] (Second Folio), London: […] Richard Meighen, published 1640, →OCLC:
- A neat courtier, / Of a most elegant thread.
Hyponyms
Derived terms
- Abalakov thread
- brahminical thread
- golden thread
- green thread
- hang by a thread
- hyperthreaded
- life thread
- lose the thread
- needle-and-thread grass
- nun's thread
- Pagenstecher thread
- pick up the threads
- pick up the threads of
- sister's thread
- threadbare
- thread bug
- thread count
- threader
- thread lace
- thread-legged bug
- thread-locking fluid
- thread mode
- thread necromancy
- thread needle
- thread of life
- thread of thought
- thread-paper
- thread pool
- threadsafe
- thread-safe
- thread snake
- thready
Translations
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Verb
thread (third-person singular simple present threads, present participle threading, simple past threaded or (archaic) thrid, past participle threaded or (archaic) thridden)
- (transitive) To put thread through.
- thread a needle
- (transitive) To pass (through a narrow constriction or around a series of obstacles).
- I think I can thread my way through here, but it’s going to be tight.
- 1950 April, Timothy H. Cobb, “The Kenya-Uganda Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 266:
- The line to Uganda goes up the side of a slope in a series of S-bends, and as the telegraph wires follow the line, from below they look like a forest as they thread backwards and forwards about six times.
- 1961 February, D. Bertram, “The lines to Wetherby and their traffic”, in Trains Illustrated, page 101:
- On the descent the line is often in cuttings; some are high, such as at Scarcroft, where a cut through firestone and fireclay was necessary, and near Bardsey, where the line threads a deep tree-lined gorge.
- 2013 October 19, Ben Smith, BBC Sport:
- Picking the ball up in his own half, Januzaj threaded a 40-yard pass into the path of Rooney to slice Southampton open in the blink of an eye.
- To screw on; to fit the threads of a nut on a bolt.
- (transitive) To remove the hair using a thread.
- How to thread your eyebrows and trim them
Derived terms
- threaded (adjective)
- multithreaded
- thread the needle
Translations
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See also
sewing needle on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
References
Anagrams
French
Etymology
Pronunciation
Noun
thread m (plural threads)
Synonyms
Italian
Etymology
Noun
thread m (invariable)
Portuguese
Etymology
Unadapted borrowing from English thread.
Pronunciation
Noun
thread f (plural threads)
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *terh₁-
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms inherited from Old English
- English terms derived from Old English
- English terms inherited from Proto-Germanic
- English terms derived from Proto-Germanic
- English terms inherited from Proto-Indo-European
- English 1-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- Rhymes:English/ɛd
- Rhymes:English/ɛd/1 syllable
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with quotations
- English terms with usage examples
- en:Engineering
- en:Computing
- en:Internet
- English verbs
- English transitive verbs
- English terms with collocations
- en:Fibers
- en:Sewing
- French terms borrowed from English
- French terms derived from English
- French 1-syllable words
- French terms with IPA pronunciation
- French lemmas
- French nouns
- French countable nouns
- French masculine nouns
- fr:Computing
- fr:Internet
- Italian terms borrowed from English
- Italian terms derived from English
- Italian lemmas
- Italian nouns
- Italian indeclinable nouns
- Italian countable nouns
- Italian masculine nouns
- it:Internet
- Portuguese terms borrowed from English
- Portuguese unadapted borrowings from English
- Portuguese terms derived from English
- Portuguese 2-syllable words
- Portuguese terms with IPA pronunciation
- Rhymes:Portuguese/ɛdʒi
- Rhymes:Portuguese/ɛdʒi/2 syllables
- Rhymes:Portuguese/ɛdi
- Rhymes:Portuguese/ɛdi/2 syllables
- Portuguese lemmas
- Portuguese nouns
- Portuguese countable nouns
- Portuguese feminine nouns
- pt:Computing
- pt:Internet