Thigh

How to spell thigh

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce thigh

What does thigh mean?

1. nounThe part of the leg between the hip and the knee.

Thigh in a sentence

• The runner pulled a muscle in her left thigh during the race.

• He rested the laptop on his thigh while sitting on the train.

Where does thigh come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a thoroughly native English word, descending from Old English 'theoh' (written with the runic letter for 'th'), which meant the thick upper part of the leg. It traces back to Proto-Germanic 'theuham', and you can still see its cousins in Dutch 'dij' and Old Norse 'thjo', all describing the same fleshy stretch of the leg. The underlying ancient sense was 'the thick or swollen part', a notion linked to roots meaning 'to swell' or 'be plump'. The troublesome '-gh' is a fossil: it once stood for a real guttural sound (something like the rasp at the end of Scottish 'loch'), but English quietly stopped pronouncing it centuries ago while the spelling stubbornly stayed put. That is why 'thigh' rhymes neatly with 'high' and 'sigh', three words that all carry the same now-silent ending.

How the word is built

• thigh (single native root; the silent -gh preserves an old throaty consonant that English stopped pronouncing)