thinning

thinning is the present participle and gerund of thin.

Noun

thinning (plural thinnings)

Process of removing plants or parts of plants to facilitate the growth of other plants
- The trimming, pruning and thinning must be managed with care. Some need more thinning than others.1881, Indiana State Board of Agriculture, “Forestry”, in Annual Report of the Indiana State Board of Agriculture, page 232
Wood, leaves, or other plant parts removed during the process of thinning
- but with a suitable mixture of early and late maturing kinds, the young hickories, ashs and larches can be utilized as thinnings, at a profit. In estimating the value of the thinnings upon the basis of Prof. Sargent's estimate of the acreage yield of hoop poles from hickory plantations,1878, Wisconsin State Horticultural Society, “Trees for the roadside and farm”, in Annual report of the Wisconsin State Horticultural Society, page 59
The action or result of reducing thickness, density, or number
- It is highly likely that this thinning was not atrophic or pathological, but simply the thinning from stretching under the forces of labor, as Bandl and others explain it.1885, Robert Barnes, A System of Obstetric Medicine and Surgery, volume 2, page 614

thin (third-person singular simple present thins, present participle thinning, simple past and past participle thinned)

(transitive) To make thin or thinner.
- Exhausted fathers thinned the blood,
  You curse the legacy of pain;
  Darling of an infected brood,
  You feel disaster climb the vein.1941, Theodore Roethke, “Feud”, in Open House, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A[braham] Knopf, →OCLC; republished in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, London: Faber and Faber […], 1968, →OCLC, page 4
(intransitive) To become thin or thinner.
- The crowds thinned after the procession had passed: there was nothing more to see.
To dilute.
To remove some plants or parts of plants in order to improve the growth of what remains.
- So floriferous are Asian pears, and the tree so laden with young fruit, that as the tree approaches maturity it is worth considering thinning the fruit (I can't quite bring myself to thin the flowers) so as to neither overburden the tree for this year nor tire it for the next. Thinning early in the...2015 September 5, Mark Diacono, “In praise of the Asian pear”, in The Daily Telegraph (Gardening), archived from the original on 12 Sep 2015, page 3

thinning (not generally comparable, comparative more thinning, superlative most thinning)

(not comparable, usually) Becoming less thick, dense, or numerous
- thinning hair

What does thinning mean?: Thinning means process of removing plants or parts of plants to facilitate the growth of other plants.
What is thinning the present participle and gerund of?: Thinning is the present participle and gerund of thin.
What part of speech is thinning?: Thinning can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of thinning?: The plural of thinning is thinnings.

Adapted from Wiktionary: thinning (page history and authors); 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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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