Thread

How to spell thread

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce thread

What does thread mean?

1. nounA long, thin strand of cotton, wool, or other fibre used in sewing or weaving.
2. verbTo pass a strand through a narrow opening, or to move carefully through a tight or winding space.
3. nounA connected series of messages or posts on a single topic in an online forum or email.

Thread in a sentence

• noun

  She snapped the loose thread hanging from her sleeve.

• verb

  He struggled to thread the needle in the dim light.

• noun

  The support team replied at the bottom of the email thread.

• noun

  The tailor matched the thread to the colour of the suit.

• verb

  The driver had to thread the lorry between the parked cars.

• noun

  She posted the meeting notes in the project thread.

Where does thread come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from the Old English thrǣd, meaning a fine strand of twisted fibre, and it is one of the oldest words in the language, in use long before the Norman conquest. It traces back to a Germanic root linked to the verb that gave us 'throw', because early on it carried the sense of something twisted or thrown together, the way fibres are twisted into a single line. Close relatives survive across the Germanic family, including the Dutch draad and the German Draht, both meaning 'wire' or 'thread'. Over the centuries the word stretched far beyond sewing: by extension it came to mean the continuous line of an argument or story, the spiral ridge cut into a screw, and, much more recently, a connected chain of messages online. The 'ea' spelling, pronounced like a short 'e', is the small trap, since the word sounds as though it could be written 'thred'.

How the word is built

• thread (single morpheme from Old English thrǣd: a twisted strand)