Word.ws English Dictionary

thick as thieves

thick as thieves adjective: intimate, close-knit, tight.

Adjective

thick as thieves (not comparable)

  1. (idiomatic, simile) Intimate, close-knit, tight.
    • So the king sneaked into the wigwam and took to his bottle for comfort, and before long the duke tackled HIS bottle; and so in about a half an hour they was as thick as thieves again, and the tighter they got the lovinger they got, and went off a-snoring in each other's arms.1884, Mark Twain, chapter 30, in Huckleberry Finn
    • He and Victoria were as thick as thieves, and are about equal in wickedness.1904, Fergus Hume, chapter 9, in The Red Window

Forms of thick as thieves

alternative formthick as two thieves
alternative formclose as thieves

Origin of thick as thieves

From thick (“friendly, intimate”), first attested in 1827 as "thick as two thieves".

Questions about thick as thieves

What does thick as thieves mean?
Thick as thieves means intimate, close-knit, tight.
What part of speech is thick as thieves?
Thick as thieves is an adjective.

Words near thick as thieves in the dictionary

  1. thick as a whale omelette
  2. thick as champ
  3. thick as mince
  4. thick as pig shit
  5. thick as pigshit
  6. thick as thieves
  7. thick as two short planks
  8. thick client
  9. thick clients
  10. thick crust pizza
  11. thick crust pizzas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thick as thieves (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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