Word.ws English Dictionary

thinglike

thinglike adjective: resembling a thing; having the properties associated with a physical object; objectlike.

Adjective

thinglike (comparative more thinglike, superlative most thinglike)

  1. Resembling a thing; having the properties associated with a physical object; objectlike.
    • Although Tex had assured me only the other day that New Yorkers prized intelligence, I wasn’t sure mine could be counted on. It didn’t feel like a thing in our very thinglike world, a world where identity began with the choice of massive automobile […]1988, Edmund White, chapter 2, in The Beautiful Room is Empty, New York: Vintage International, published 1994

Forms of thinglike

comparativemore thinglike
superlativemost thinglike

Origin of thinglike

From thing + -like. Compare English thingly, German dinglich.

Words formed from thinglike

Questions about thinglike

What does thinglike mean?
Thinglike means resembling a thing; having the properties associated with a physical object; objectlike.
What part of speech is thinglike?
Thinglike is an adjective.

Words near thinglike in the dictionary

  1. thingism
  2. thingless
  3. thinglet
  4. thinglets
  5. Thingley
  6. thinglike
  7. thinglikeness
  8. thingliness
  9. thingly
  10. thingmabob
  11. thingmabobs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thinglike (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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Cite this entry: “thinglike.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/thinglike. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.