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thing

[thing]

Example Sentences Origin

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noun

a material object without life or consciousness; an inanimate object.

some entity, object, or creature that is not or cannot be specifically designated or precisely described: The stick had a brass thing on it.

anything that is or may become an object of thought: things of the spirit.

things, matters; affairs: Things are going well now.

a fact, circumstance, or state of affairs: It is a curious thing.

EXPAND

an action, deed, event, or performance: to do great things; His death was a horrible thing.

a particular, respect, or detail: perfect in all things.

aim; objective: The thing is to reach this line with the ball.

an article of clothing: I don't have a thing to wear.

10.

things,

implements, utensils, or other articles for service: I'll wash the breakfast things.

personal possessions or belongings: Pack your things and go!

11.

a task; chore: I've got a lot of things to do today.

12.

a living being or creature: His baby's a cute little thing.

13.

a thought or statement: I have just one thing to say to you.

14.

Informal. a peculiar attitude or feeling, either positive or negative, toward something; mental quirk: She has a thing about cats.

15.

something signified or represented, as distinguished from a word, symbol, or idea representing it.

16.

Law. anything that may be the subject of a property right.

17.

new thing, Jazz. free jazz.

18.

the thing,

something that is correct or fashionable: That café is the thing now.

that which is expedient or necessary: The thing to do is to tell them the truth.

COLLAPSE

Idioms

19.

do/find one's own thing, Informal. to pursue a lifestyle that expresses one's self. Also, do/find one's thing.

20.

make a good thing of, Informal. to turn (a situation, experience, etc.) to one's own profit; benefit by: She made a good thing of her spare-time hobbies.

21.

not to get a thing out of,

to be unable to obtain information or news from: The police couldn't get a thing out of him.

to fail to appreciate, understand, or derive aesthetic pleasure from: My wife likes opera, but I don't get a thing out of it.

22.

see/hear things, Informal. to have hallucinations.

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Thing is always a great word to know.

So is flibbertigibbet. Does it mean:

a chattering or flighty, light-headed person.

a calculus or concretion found in the stomach or intestines of certain animals, esp. ruminants, formerly reputed to be an effective remedy for poison.

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Origin:
before 900; Middle English; Old English: orig., meeting; see thing²

Example Sentences

It has celebrities and media outlets, two groups keen on declaring trends, scrambling to predict the next big thing.

Disruptive innovation first takes hold on the margins where the next best thing may be nothing at all.

And it had the bonus of being the morally right thing to do.

EXPAND

It has celebrities and media outlets, two groups keen on declaring trends, scrambling to predict the next big thing.

Disruptive innovation first takes hold on the margins where the next best thing may be nothing at all.

And it had the bonus of being the morally right thing to do.

On a raw winter day you might think that a few degrees of warming wouldn't be such a bad thing anyway.

It gets mom and pop out of the oil drilling business, and that is a good thing.

The thing that fascinates me is the asymmetry of this process.

But it's a noble thing they're doing, and well worth your time.

Name one thing you wish your parents knew about you, but you can't bring yourself to tell them.

It is appalling how often reporters use the last, flippant thing you said.

No-one would question the need for functional financial markets and innovation is typically a good thing.

Kids are adept at becoming the climate police and that's a good thing.

Bear in mind that there's no such thing as a failed experiment-only data.

The beat-up thing is actually used for cutting fish.

Well, good thing the box is heavily lined with newspaper.

One thing to do is think of what questions you would ask the others on the panel.

The only thing better than a good travel book is going there yourself.

The best thing you can do is eat right, the next best thing is be focused and at peace.

Surely the only thing separating the two genera is not limited to the presence/absence of parietal fenestrae.

Lots of opinionated people--and that's a good thing.

To write code about a thing, you have to know the thing itself, absolutely.

Not surprised given that policymakers have focused on the wrong thing for far too long.

It is a cool thing to read i always buy the book on the first day it comes out i hope he makes more.

Finally, if you take only one thing from this post, let it be this-sitting too much is not the same as exercising too little.

The last box is packed and taped shut, the moving truck will be here first thing in the morning.

Then somes an arctic blast that kills the whole thing to the ground.

The sad thing is, they probably don't even realize how they act.

If you're concerned about forecasts of long-term global warming, you might be worried about the wrong thing.

Some camera work, some stroking, and next thing you know you're out of your own body.

Count me as one a reader who laughed her way through the entire thing and knew from the first joke that it was satire.

The real thing can be harder to find than you think.

The last thing you want to convey to search committees is desperation or rage.

Explain that gestures don't always mean the same thing in different countries.

The first thing one learns is there is no such thing as an environmental expert.

Sometimes the more obvious a thing is the more difficult it is to see it.

City hotels have been jumping on the green thing for years, but it's bigger than that now.

The birthplace of downhill brings you the sport's next big thing.

Because once you put the pieces together, it's quite a startling thing.

It makes you wonder why the real thing can't look as good as the picture.

It's one thing to create a patio on bare earth, and another to build it over an existing concrete slab.

Turns out there is such a thing as being too young and too thin.

Faced with a dauntingly complex problem, scientists typically do the logical thing.

The first thing a biologist wants to know about a piece of land or water is what lives there.

The germination rate has been excellent for one thing with hardly any effort on my part.

Emphasize that this scene is the type of thing that can happen when countries go to war over territory or other issues.

On the way to learning that one thing can represent another, young children often conflate the real item and its symbol.

Oh no, he insists, it's not hard to get the thing up.

The really surprising thing was how varied our responses were.

The technology is changing pretty rapidly, which is a good thing.

Fish isn't the only thing in the ocean worth eating.

The first thing you would probably do is to call home and have one of your children read the list off to you.

The expanse of sky is so wide, there's often more than one thing going.

To recycle, you'll have to cut the thing open and wash it.

While imposing ersatz fun on their employees, companies are battling against the real thing.

The pharmaceutical folks have to head back to the lab to find a new killer antibiotic and the whole thing starts over again.

The thing to remember is that the younger weeds are, the less time it takes to eradicate them.

But it is one thing to take religion as an object of study and another to take religion seriously.

It is still too early to say whether topological insulators are the next big thing.

Most retrospectives feature maquettes a few inches high and photographs of the real thing.

The canyon is one of the great sights in the world, and the only bad thing about it is how hard it is to tear yourself away.

When they did the same thing to the proteins they found that the proteins were outside the bacteria.

In the shadowy world of modern thievery, the cachet in loot the next best thing to money may be art.

Say you're offered two jobs doing much the same thing for about the.

Pledging to negotiate the return of powers is not the same thing as pledging to secure them.

At other times he's sailed through without noticing a thing.

We often enjoy doing the same thing to rivals at faculty meetings.

The other thing is you really do trip over the history and social customs of a place when you investigate the food.

The good thing is that even if you are off a little bit, the tower will still work.

He did the right thing in resigning, and he did the right thing in the.

And for all the difficulties that result when that happens, on balance it's probably a good thing.

It is a good thing when found in large concentrations high off the ground.

The eight dimensions of the octonions aren't the only interesting thing about the number eight, however.

To him, they are not only a thing of beauty but a means of solving some of the problems.

Grouping the volumes by color adds graphic punch without costing a thing.

The goal, he says, is to persuade students to do the right thing and pay for the content.

Being the best at something does not mean that doing that thing is the best way to use your scarce economic resources.

Noguchi and his team have learned a thing or two about expedition cleanliness.

From a biological perspective, there is no such thing as devolution.

The easiest thing to do is buy new hardware that's the same size as the old.

The best and only realistic thing you can do in this context is to keep your eyes open and hope for the best.

The important thing is not to get head-butted or hit by its tail, especially when it is pulled from the water.

Prove what a big macho jerkoff you are by wiping out every other living thing.

At first, it seemed a clever gimmick, the kind of thing that is fun for a while but quickly becomes tiresome.

Intercropping is my next favorite thing to building chicken tractors.

But when asked if it was a good or a bad thing that fewer men were graduating from college than women, their reactions switched:.

Ask questions, learn everything you can, and understand that you have power to make others listen-and do the right thing.

It is so sad to see this and think how truely easy it is for humans to be so uncaring about a living thing.

Inevitably, this sort of thing turns some residents off.

The first basic thing is that they all have three sepals and three petals.

The first thing she did was climb to the attic to make sure she could raise the ceiling.

Rankings have been a good thing for business education.

The only tangential thing is an interest in ancient cultures.

So much energy develops in such a little space that eventually the whole thing blows up, leaving no remnant behind.

The great thing about a guest ranch is that all the hard choices are made for you, leaving you all the easy, fun decisions.

For millions of beachgoers, the sight of a dorsal fin sticking out of the water means a shark with one thing on its mind: prey.

The only safe thing to do with suspicious e-mail is to delete it.

One thing the trainees all have in common is their relative unfamiliarity with horses.

Most casual visitors will swear time has stopped dead, that the only thing growing faster than the wheat is boredom.

There was no such thing as pre-school or kindergarten.

Another big consideration for your outdoor room is shade, though it's often the last thing people think about.

Many of the rest are alumni who knew a good thing when they saw it and found reason to stay.

One thing you can do to help is provide a nesting site for local.

The sort of thing that used to happen only in fiction can hardly compare to what's in the news today.

There's one more thing to consider if you want really great tomatoes: water management.

Working on this kind of thing is a good way to trick yourself into thinking you're a historian.

She is the best thing that has happened to our neighborhood.

Betty wears bifocals, and it's no small thing to see as clearly as she does after watching a century go by.

The other thing that could be happening is you might have a noisy dishwasher.

Your imagination is the only thing that limits the uses of hardscape.

The last thing you want is to invest this much time and effort only to have your paint peel a couple of months later.

In your own garden, you could accomplish the same thing by bringing potted tropicals under an extended eave.

COLLAPSE

Dictionary.com Unabridged

noun

(in Scandinavian countries) a public meeting or assembly, especially a legislative assembly or a court of law.

Also, ting.

Compare thingstead.

Origin:
1830–40; < Old Norse: assembly; cognate with thing¹, Dutch ding, German Ding thing, orig., meeting; akin to Gothic theihs time

Link To thing

Collins

World English Dictionary

thing¹ (θɪŋ)

—n
1.	an object, fact, affair, circumstance, or concept considered as being a separate entity
2.	any inanimate object
3.	an object or entity that cannot or need not be precisely named
4.	informal a person or animal regarded as the object of pity, contempt, etc: you poor thing
5.	an event or act
6.	a thought or statement
7.	law any object or right that may be the subject of property (as distinguished from a person)
8.	a device, means, or instrument
9.	(often plural) a possession, article of clothing, etc
10.	informal the normal pattern of behaviour in a particular context: not interested in the marriage thing
11.	informal a mental attitude, preoccupation or obsession (esp in the phrase have a thing about)
12.	an activity or mode of behaviour satisfying to one's personality (esp in the phrase do one's (own) thing)
13.	the done thing acceptable or normal behaviour
14.	the thing the latest fashion
15.	be on to a good thing to be in a profitable situation or position
16.	make a thing of to make a fuss about; exaggerate the importance of

[Old English thing assembly; related to Old Norse thing assembly, Old High German ding assembly]

thing² (θɪŋ, tɪŋ)

—n
	(often capital) Also: ting a law court or public assembly in the Scandinavian countries

[C19: from Old Norse thing assembly (the same word as thing¹)]

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

thing

O.E. þing "meeting, assembly," later "entity, being, matter" (subject of deliberation in an assembly), also "act, deed, event, material object, body, being," from P.Gmc. *thengan "appointed time" (cf. O.Fris. thing "assembly, council, suit, matter, thing," M.Du. dinc "court-day, suit, plea, concern,

EXPAND

affair, thing," Du. ding "thing," O.H.G. ding "public assembly for judgment and business, lawsuit," Ger. ding "affair, matter, thing," O.N. þing "public assembly"). Some suggest an ultimate connection to PIE root *ten- "stretch," perhaps on notion of "stretch of time for a meeting or assembly." For sense evolution, cf. Fr. chose, Sp. cosa "thing," from L. causa "judicial process, lawsuit, case;" L. res "affair, thing," also "case at law, cause." Old sense is preserved in second element of hustings and in Icelandic Althing, the nation's general assembly. Southern U.S. pronunciation thang attested from 1937. The thing "what's stylish or fashionable" is recorded from 1762. Phrase do your thing "follow your particular predilection," though associated with hippie-speak of 1960s is attested from 1841. Used colloquially since 1602 to indicate things the speaker can't name at the moment, often with various meaningless suffixes, e.g. thingumbob (1751), thingamajig (1824).

COLLAPSE

Slang Dictionary

thing definition

n.
one's interest; one's bag. : This isn't exactly my thing, but I'll give it a try.

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
Cite This Source

American Heritage

Idioms & Phrases

thing

In addition to the idiom beginning with thing, also see all the rage (thing); all things to all men; amount to the same thing; do one's thing; first thing; first things first; for one (thing); get (a thing) going; get into the swing of things; greatest thing since sliced bread; have a good thing going; have a thing about; just one of those things; know all the answers (a thing or two); little knowledge is a dangerous thing; near thing; no such thing; not know beans (the first thing); of all things; other things being equal; seeing things; sure thing; the latest (thing); the thing; the thing is; too much of a good thing; very thing.

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