Word.ws English Dictionary

thick and thin

thick and thin noun: both thickets and thin woodland; all obstacles in a path (including bad weather).

Noun

thick and thin (uncountable)

  1. Both thickets and thin woodland; all obstacles in a path (including bad weather).
    • His tyreling Jade he fiersly forth did push / Through thicke and thin, both over banck and bush [...]1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
  2. (idiomatic) Both good and bad times.
    • As Joan of France, or English Mall, / Through perils both of Wind and Limb, / Through thick and thin she follow'd him, / In ev'ry Adventure h' undertook, / And never him, or it forsook.1662 (indicated as 1663), [Samuel Butler], “[The First Part of Hudibras]. Canto II.”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. […], London: […] John Martyn and Henry Herringman, […], published 1678...
    • I must follow him through thick and thin.1687, John Phillips, transl., Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes

Questions about thick and thin

What does thick and thin mean?
Thick and thin means both thickets and thin woodland; all obstacles in a path (including bad weather).
What part of speech is thick and thin?
Thick and thin is a noun.

Words near thick and thin in the dictionary

  1. thiccer
  2. thiccest
  3. thiccness
  4. thick
  5. thick and fast
  6. thick and thin
  7. thick and threefold
  8. thick around the middle
  9. thick as a brick
  10. thick as a plank
  11. thick as a whale omelette

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thick and thin (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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