Word.ws English Dictionary

in the thick of

in the thick of preposition: in the middle of (something difficult).

Preposition

in the thick of

  1. (idiomatic) In the middle of (something difficult).
    • In the thick of the railway controversies of his day, Francis naturally had his prejudices. It seems that he cordially disliked the aristocracy in general.1951 December, Michael Robbins, “John Francis's "History of the English Railway"”, in Railway Magazine, page 800
    • His stories about Huey, Eleanor and Jack, and other bigwigs of various worlds, reveal a life lived in the thick of legend.1991 August 24, Lewis Gannett, “Gore Stories”, in Gay Community News, volume 19, number 6, page 8

Words formed from in the thick of

Questions about in the thick of

What does in the thick of mean?
In the thick of means in the middle of (something difficult).
What part of speech is in the thick of?
In the thick of is a preposition.

Words near in the thick of in the dictionary

  1. in the streets
  2. in the swim
  3. in the swim of things
  4. in the tank
  5. in the teeth of
  6. in the thick of
  7. in the thick of it
  8. in the throes of
  9. in the throws of
  10. in the toilet
  11. in the trenches

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: in the thick of (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-in the thick of.ogg.

Cite this entry: “in the thick of.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/in_the_thick_of. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.