Other forms: threads, threaded, threading
A thread is a long thin strand used to sew cloth together. A reel of thread, black thread, thread a needle.
As a verb, to thread is to pass thread through a needle, or to make your way through something narrow: thread through the crowd. The figurative sense is a connecting line running through something: the thread of the argument, lose the thread. Online, a thread is a series of connected messages. Note threadbare, meaning worn until the threads show; and hanging by a thread, meaning barely surviving.
1nounthreadA long thin strand used for sewing.
“She pulled a piece of red thread through the eye of the needle.”
2nounconnectingA connecting line running through something.
“He lost the thread of it after about ten minutes.”
3verbpassTo pass thread through, or to make your way through.
“She threaded through the crowd without touching anybody.”
thread is a strand or connecting line.
Old English thraed comes from the same root as throw, which once meant to twist — a thread is a twisted thing. Spinning was twisting fibres together, so the word describes how it was made rather than what it is for.
Proto-Indo-European
*terh₁-
Proto-Indo-European
*treh₁-tu-s
Proto-Germanic
*þrēduz
Old English
þrǣd
Middle English
thred
English, today
thread
Built from
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”). 2 Cognate with yol dreade (“thread”), stq Träid (“thread, wire”), cim draat (“string, thread”), Dutch draad (“thread, wire”), German Draht (“thread, wire”), lb Drot (“wire”), Danish -, Norwegian Bokmål -, Norwegian Nynorsk - and Swedish tråd (“thread, wire”), Faroese tráður (“thread”), Icelandic þráður (“thread”). Non-Germanic cognates include Albanian dredh (“twist, turn”). More at throw.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA