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thread

Pronunciation: /ˈθɹɛd/

The English word “thread” has 20 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A cord formed by spinning or twisting together textile fibers or filaments into one or more continuous strands, typically used in needlework.
  2. A piece of yarn, especially said of warps and wefts in a woven fabric.
  3. Any of various natural (as spiderweb, etc.) or manufactured filaments (as glass, plastic, metal, etc.).
  4. A slender stream of water.
  5. The line midway between the banks of a stream.
  6. A screw thread.
  7. The continuing course of life; the thread of life.
  8. A line of reasoning, sequence of ideas, or train of thought.
  9. A continuing theme that modifies the whole discourse.
  10. A unit of execution, lighter in weight than a process, usually sharing memory and other resources with other threads executing concurrently.
  11. A series of posts or messages, consisting of an initial post and responses to it, generally relating to the same subject, on a newsgroup, Internet forum, or social media platform.
  12. A sequence of connections.
  13. A precarious condition; something that which offers no real or otherwise perceived security.
  14. The degree of fineness; quality; nature.

verb

  1. To pass a thread through the eye of a needle.
  2. To fix (beads, pearls, etc.) upon a thread that is passed through; to string.
  3. To make one's way through or between (a constriction or obstacles).
  4. To cautiously make (one's way) through a precarious place or situation.
  5. To pass through; to pierce through; to penetrate.
  6. To interweave as if with thread; to intersperse.

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”). Cognates Cognate with Yola dreade (“thread”), Saterland Frisian Träid (“thread, wire”), Cimbrian draat (“string, thread”), Dutch draad (“thread, wire”), German Draht (“thread, wire”), Luxembourgish Drot (“wire”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål,…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.