Other forms: thickets
A thicket is a dense tangle of bushes and small trees. Push through the thicket, hide in the thicket, a thicket of thorn.
It is thick enough to be hard to walk through, which is the whole of the word. Figuratively a thicket of regulations or of paperwork is a tangle you cannot get through, and that use is at least as common as the literal one now.
1nounthicketA dense tangle of bushes and small trees.
“The rabbit disappeared into a thicket of brambles.”
thicket is a growth.
Old English thiccet, from thicce, thick, plus a noun ending meaning a place full of something.
Old English
þiccet
Middle English
*thikket
English, today
thicket
Built from
Middle English thikket, from Old English þiccet, from þicce (“thick”) + Old English - nominal suffix -et. Compare similar German Dickicht (“thicket”), which is first attested in the 17th century, however. Compare typologically Bulgarian гъстак, mk густеж, Czech houští, Polish gęstwina (< gǫstъ); Latin dūmus (akin to Latin dense).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA