English

Noun

Thing ‎(plural Things)

1. (chiefly historical) A public assembly or judicial council in a Germanic country.
   • 1894, George W. Dasent (translator), The Orkneyingers Saga, Icelandic Sagas, volume 3:

     But when the earl held a Thing, then Thorkell spoke on behalf of the freemen, told the need of the men, and bade the earl spare his people.

   • 1988, Patrick J. Geary, Chapter II, "The Barbarian World in the Sixth Century", 'Germanic Culture', Before France and Germany: the creation and transformation of the Merovingian world, page 55:

     The supreme political unit of the tribe was the assembly of its free male warriors. This assembly, called the "Thing", served as the court of highest instance for dealing with individuals who had broken fundamental elements of the tribal pact, an occasion to meet and to reinforce ties among members, and, often, an assembly which preceded a military campaign.

   • 1997, Bernard Scudder (trans.), Egil's Saga, Penguin 2001 (The Sagas of Icelanders), page 168:

     Before Thorstein left home, he and Asgerd decided to take Arinbjorn's gift, the silk cloak, out of Egil's chest, and Thorstein wore it to the Thing.

   • 2004, Sjúrður Skaale, The Right to National Self-Determination: the Faroe Islands and Greenland, page 46:

     1928 The Executive Committee of the Law Thing is created to assume executive powers from the Governor.

Translations

Derived terms

• Thingstead
• the Great Thing of Norway
• the Law Thing of the Faroes

Anagrams

• night, Night

German

Etymology

Modern borrowing from Old Norse þing.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /tɪŋ/

Noun

Thing n ‎(genitive Things, plural Thinge)

1. Thing (historic Germanic council)

Declension

Synonyms

• Ding (dated)

English

Noun

thing ‎(plural things)

1. That which is considered to exist as a separate entity, object, quality or concept.
   • 2013 June 21, Oliver Burkeman, “The tao of tech”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 2, page 48:

     The dirty secret of the internet is that all this distraction and interruption is immensely profitable. Web companies like to boast about […], or offering services that let you […], "share the things you love with the world" and so on. But the real way to build a successful online business is to be better than your rivals at undermining people's control of their own attention.

2. A word, symbol, sign, or other referent that can be used to refer to any entity.
3. An individual object or distinct entity.
4. (informal) Something that is normal or generally recognised.

   Bacon pie? Is that a thing?‎

5. (law)
   1. Whatever can be owned.
   2. Corporeal object.
6. (somewhat dated) The latest fad or fashion.

   What do you mean you don't twerk, Stacy? It's the latest thing!‎

7. (in the plural) Clothes, possessions or equipment.

   Hold on, let me just grab my things.‎

8. (informal) A unit or container, usually containing edible goods.

   get me a thing of apple juice at the store;  I just ate a whole thing of jelly beans‎

9. (informal) A problem, dilemma, or complicating factor.

   The car looks cheap, but the thing is, I have doubts about its safety.‎

10. (slang) A ****.
    • 1959, William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch, 50th anniversary edition (2009), p. 126:

      “Oh Gertie it’s true. It’s all true. They’ve got a horrid gash instead of a thrilling thing.”

11. A living being or creature.
    • 2013 August 3, “Revenge of the nerds”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:

      Think of banking today and the image is of grey-suited men in towering skyscrapers. Its future, however, is being shaped in converted warehouses and funky offices in San Francisco, New York and London, where bright young things in jeans and T-shirts huddle around laptops, sipping lattes or munching on free food.

    you poor thing;  she's a funny old thing, but her heart's in the right place;  I met a pretty blond thing at the bar‎

12. That which matters; the crux.

    that's the thing: we don't know where he went;  the thing is, I don't have any money‎

13. Used after a noun to refer dismissively to the situation surrounding the noun's referent.

    Oh yeah, I'm supposed to promote that vision thing.‎

    • 1914, Eugene Gladstone O'Neill, The Movie Man [playscript]:

      Don’t forget to have Gomez postpone that shooting thing. (in reference to the execution of Fernandez)

14. (informal) That which is favoured; personal preference. (Used in possessive constructions.)
15. (chiefly historical) A public assembly or judicial council in a Germanic country.
    • 1974, Jón Jóhannesson, A History of the Old Icelandic Commonwealth: Íslendinga Saga, translated by Haraldur Bessason, page 46:

      In accordance with Old Germanic custom men came to the thing fully armed, [...]

    • 1974, Jakob Benediktsson, Landnám og upphaf allsherjarríkis, in Saga Íslands, quoted in 1988 by Jesse L. Byock in Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas, and Power, page 85:

      The goðar seem both to have received payment of thing-fararkaup from those who stayed home and at the same time compensated those who went to the thing, and it cannot be seen whether they had any profit from these transactions.

    • 1988, Jesse L. Byock, Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas, and Power, page 59:

      All Icelandic things were skap-thing, meaning that they were governed by established procedure and met at regular legally designated intevals at predetermined meeting places.

Quotations

• 1611 — King James Version of the Bible, Luke 1:1

  Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us...

Synonyms

• stuff (uncountable equivalent)
• item
• yoke (Ireland)

Derived terms

Related terms

• diminutives: thingy / thingie, thingo [Aus]

Translations

External links

• thing in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• thing in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911

Verb

thing ‎(third-person singular simple present things, present participle thinging, simple past and past participle thinged)

1. (rare) To express as a thing; to reify.

Statistics

Anagrams

• night, Night

Mizo

Etymology

From Proto-Tibeto-Burman *siŋ

Noun

thing

1. tree
2. wood
3. firewood

References

• Matisoff, James A., Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman, University of California Press.

Old Dutch

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *þingą. Compare Old Saxon thing, Old Frisian thing, Old English þing, Old High German ding, Old Norse þing.

Noun

thing n

1. thing, object
2. case, matter, issue

Declension

Descendants

• Dutch: ding

Old Saxon

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *þingą. Compare Old Dutch thing, Old Frisian thing, Old English þing, Old High German ding, Old Norse þing.

Noun

thing n

1. thing, object
2. matter, case

Declension

Descendants

• Middle Low German: dink
  • Low German: Ding, Dinkj

Portuguese

Noun

thing m f (plural things)

1. (historical) Thing (public assembly)