thread

Etymology

From Middle English thred, þred, threed, from Old English þrǣd, from Proto-Germanic *þrēduz, from Proto-Indo-European *treh₁-tu-s, from *terh₁- (“rub, twist”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Träid (“thread, wire”), West Frisian tried, Dutch draad, German Draht, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish tråd, and Icelandic þráður. Non-Germanic cognates include Albanian dredh (“twist, turn”). More at throw.

noun

1. A long, thin and flexible form of material, generally with a round cross-section, used in sewing, weaving or in the construction of string.
   He walked. To the corner of Hamilton Place and Picadilly, and there stayed for a while, for it is a romantic station by night. The vague and careless rain looked like threads of gossamer silver passing across the light of the arc-lamps. 1922, Michael Arlen, “Ep./1/2”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days
2. A continued theme or idea.
   All of these essays have a common thread.
   I’ve lost the thread of what you’re saying.
3. (engineering) A screw thread.
4. A sequence of connections.
   I was pondering these things, when an incident, and a somewhat unexpected one, broke the thread of my musings. 1847, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Chapter XVIII
   ‘Let him go on. Do not interrupt him. He cannot go back, and maybe could not proceed at all if once he lost the thread of his thought.’ 1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula, Chapter 21
5. The line midway between the banks of a stream.
6. (computing) A unit of execution, lighter in weight than a process, usually sharing memory and other resources with other threads executing concurrently.
7. (Internet) A series of messages, generally grouped by subject, in which all messages except the first are replies to previous messages in the thread.
8. A filament, as of a flower, or of any fibrous substance, as of bark.
9. (figurative) Composition; quality; fineness.
   A neat courtier, / Of a most elegant thread.

verb

1. (transitive) To put thread through.
   thread a needle
2. (transitive) To pass (through a narrow constriction or around a series of obstacles).
   I think I can thread my way through here, but it’s going to be tight.
   On the descent the line is often in cuttings; some are high, such as at Scarcroft, where a cut through firestone and fireclay was necessary, and near Bardsey, where the line threads a deep tree-lined gorge. 1961 February, D. Bertram, “The lines to Wetherby and their traffic”, in Trains Illustrated, page 101
   Picking the ball up in his own half, Januzaj threaded a 40-yard pass into the path of Rooney to slice Southampton open in the blink of an eye. 19 October 2013, Ben Smith, BBC Sport
3. To screw on; to fit the threads of a nut on a bolt.
4. (transitive) To remove the hair using a thread.
   How to thread your eyebrows and trim them