Other forms: thighs
Your thigh is the thick upper part of your leg, between the hip and the knee. It is the part that burns when you take the stairs two at a time, and the part that sticks to a plastic chair in summer.
The gh is silent — thigh rhymes with 'why'. The bone inside is the thigh bone, the femur, the longest bone in the body. Butchers use the word as well: chicken thighs are the darker, richer meat above the drumstick. Compounds are everywhere — thigh-high boots, inner thigh, thigh muscles. Keep thigh apart from shin and calf, which are the front and back of the lower leg.
1nounthighThe upper part of the leg, between the hip and the knee.
“He balanced the laptop on one thigh.”
2nounanimalThe same part of an animal, eaten as meat.
“She browned four chicken thighs in the pan.”
thigh is a part of the leg.
Thigh is one of the oldest words in the language, coming down from Old English þēoh through Proto-Germanic *þeuhą to a Proto-Indo-European root *tewk-. Its relatives are still standing across the North Sea: Dutch dij, Icelandic þjó, West Frisian tsjea. Further off sit Lithuanian táukas and Russian тук, both words for animal fat.
Middle English
þigh
English, today
thigh
From Middle English þigh. From Middle English thigh, thegh, thiȝ, theȝhe, þigh, þyȝh, from Old English þēoh, þīoh, from Proto-West Germanic þeuh, from Proto-Germanic þeuhą, from Proto-Indo-European tewk-. See also West Frisian tsjea, Dutch dij, Middle High German diech, Icelandic þjó; also Irish tóin (“hind, rump”), Lithuanian táukas (“fat”), Russian тук (“animal fat”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Body & Health, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 16 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word