Thicket
noun ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A dense, but generally small, growth of shrubs, bushes or small trees; a copse.
"Suddenly from a lumpy tussock of old grass some twenty yards in front of them, with black-tipped ears erect and long hinder limbs throwing it forward, started a hare. It bolted for a thicket of alders."
- 2 a dense growth of bushes wordnet
- 3 A dense aggregation of other things, concrete or abstract. figuratively
"He had to complete a thicket of paperwork before he was allowed to join the company."
- 4 The collection of many small linked files created when a document is saved in HTML format by some word processors and web site creation software. figuratively
Example
More examples"The path stretching from that house to the bamboo thicket was laid with stone paving."
Etymology
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 (gǎstak), Macedonian густеж (gustež), Czech houští, Polish gęstwina (< Proto-Slavic *gǫstъ); Latin dūmus (akin to dense).
Related phrases
More for "thicket"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.