thread

• thred (obsolete)

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.

• IPA^(key): /θɹɛd/
  • (General American) IPA^(key): [θɾ̪̊ɛd]

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛd
• Hyphenation: thread

thread (plural threads)

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. (engineering) A screw thread.
4. 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.’

5. The line midway between the banks of a stream.
6. (computing) A unit of execution, lighter in weight than a process, usually sharing memory and other resources with other threads executing concurrently.
8. (Internet) A series of messages, generally grouped by subject, in which all messages except the first are replies to previous messages in the thread.
9. A filament, as of a flower, or of any fibrous substance, as of bark.
10. (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.

thread (third-person singular simple present threads, present participle threading, simple past threaded or (archaic) thrid, past participle threaded or (archaic) thridden)

1. (transitive) To put thread through.

   thread a needle

2. (transitive) To pass (through a narrow constriction or around a series of obstacles).

   Synonym: navigate

   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.

3. To screw on; to fit the threads of a nut on a bolt.
4. (transitive) To remove (hair) using a thread.

   How to thread your eyebrows and trim them

5. To interweave as if with .
   • 2010 April 1, Gayla Marty, Memory of Trees: A Daughter’s Story of a Family Farm, U of Minnesota Press, →ISBN, page 177:

     [...] the urban landscape threaded with parks and trees to the horizon. The enormous sky over that flat line dazzled clear blue or filled with towers of cumulus clouds.

   • 2014 June 30, G.B. Lindsey, Diana Copland, Libby Drew, Secrets of Neverwood: An Anthology, Carina Press, →ISBN:

     [...] dark hair threaded with gray pulled back from a face still beautiful in spite of clear evidence of the passage of time.

   • 2021 November 4, Steven Mithen, Land of the Ilich: Journey's into Islay's Past, Birlinn Ltd, →ISBN:

     [...] landscape threaded with rivers, roads, tracks, pathways and an airport runway; one peppered with villages, farms, crofts and distilleries. Visitors to Islay, especially those coming from densely populated urban areas, often mistakenly […]

   • 2023 May 2, Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls, Penguin, →ISBN, page 6:

     [...] dark hair threaded with early silver.

• cross-thread
• threaded (adjective)
• multithreaded
• thread the needle

• sewing needle on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• thread on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• dearth, Theard, hatred, dareth, red hat, hetdar, Dehart

Borrowed from English thread.

• (Canada) IPA^(key): /tʁɛd/
• (France) IPA^(key): /sʁɛd/

thread m (plural threads)

1. (anglicism, computing) thread
2. (anglicism, Internet) thread

• (computing) fil d'exécution, processus léger
• (Internet) fil de discussion, fil d'intérêt

Borrowed from English thread.

thread m (invariable)

1. (Internet) thread (series of messages)

Unadapted borrowing from English thread.

• Rhymes: -ɛdʒi, -ɛdi

thread f (plural threads)

1. (computing) thread (one of several units of execution running concurrently)
2. (Internet) thread (series of grouped messages)