Thing

How to spell thing

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce thing

What does thing mean?

1. nounAn object, item, or matter that is not or need not be precisely named.

Thing in a sentence

• She packed every thing she needed for the trip.

• The strangest thing about the meeting was how quickly it ended.

Where does thing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native Germanic word that comes from the Old English thing, which surprisingly did not first mean 'object' at all. In the early Germanic world a thing was a public assembly or council where people gathered to settle disputes and discuss matters of law; the Old Norse equivalent survives in the Icelandic parliament called the Althing. From the idea of a 'matter being discussed' the sense drifted to 'an affair or concern', and only later to the broad modern meaning of any object or entity whatsoever. Because the word is so old and short, its spelling has stayed remarkably stable, with the 'th' digraph simply replacing the original runic letter thorn. The close relatives 'something' and 'nothing' carry the very same root inside them.

How the word is built

• thing (whole word; from Old English þing, originally an assembly or matter discussed)