Word.ws English Dictionary

thorough

/ˈθʌɹə/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Northern England/ˈθʊɹə/

thorough adjective: painstaking and careful not to miss or omit any detail.

Adjective

thorough (comparative thorougher or more thorough, superlative thoroughest or most thorough)

  1. Painstaking and careful not to miss or omit any detail.
    • The Prime Minister announced a thorough investigation into the death of a father-of-two in police custody.
    • Not enough! Your work has to be thorougher than this.
    Synonyms:
    comprehensive
  2. Utter; complete; absolute.
    • Dr. Oldfield once said to me, 'You talk to me quite all right, but why is it that you never open your lips at a committee meeting? You are a drone.' I appreciated the banter. The bees are ever busy, the drone is a thorough idler.1925–29, Mahatma Gandhi, “Shyness My Shield” (chapter XVIII), in Mahadev Desai, transl., The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Part I (Autobiography), Ahemadabad: Navajivan Mudranalaya, →ISBN
    Synonyms:
    downright

Preposition

thorough

  1. (archaic) Through.
    • Ye might haue ſeene the frothy billowes fry
      Vnder the ſhip, as thorough them ſhe went […]1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
    • You are contented to be led in triumph
      Thorough the streets of Rome?1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...

Noun

thorough (plural thoroughs)

  1. (UK, dialectal) A furrow between two ridges, to drain off the surface water.
    • The Ignorance and Idleness of the Plowman, who either goes so shallow, or plows his Thoroughs so wide, or misses Part of the Ground.1733, William Ellis, Chiltern And Vale Farming Explained

Proper noun capitalized: Thorough

Thorough

  1. (historical) A scheme devised in 17th-century England by Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford to establish absolute monarchy in England, involving the appointment of Arminian clergy.

thorough meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

thorough in Hindi

detailed
विस्तृत vistŕt
utter; complete; absolute
विस्तृत vistŕt, संपूर्ण sampūrṇ

thorough in Tamil

முற்றிலுமாகிய, முழுதுமாகிய

thorough in Urdu

کامل, مکمل, پورا

thorough in Bengali

detailed
পুঙ্খানুপুঙ্খ puṅkhanupuṅkho
More languagesFewer languages
thorough in Malayalam
ഗാഢമായ, പരിപൂർണ്ണമായ
thorough in Kannada
ನೆರೆ, ಸಲೆ, ತವೆ, ಕಟ್ಟು ನಿಟ್ಟಾದ
thorough in Odia
ପୁଙ୍ଖାନୁପୁଙ୍ଖ
thorough in Sanskrit
समीक्षा samīkṣā
thorough in Arabic
مُفَصَل mufaṣal, شَامِل šāmil
thorough in Thai
ละเอียด lá-ìiat, ถี่ถ้วน, ละเอียดถี่ถ้วน
thorough in Vietnamese
hoàn toàn

Examples of thorough in a sentence

  • It's the most thorough artwork I have ever seen!
  • The infested house needs a thorough cleansing before being inhabitable again.
  • At length did cross an Albatross: / Thorough the fog it came; […]1797–1798 (date written; revised 1817), S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In Seven Parts.”, in Sibylline...

All 40 example sentences with thorough

Synonyms of thorough

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of thorough

Forms of thorough

Adjective
comparativethorougher
comparativemore thorough
superlativethoroughest
superlativemost thorough
alternative form (informal)thoro
Noun
pluralthoroughs

Origin of thorough

From Middle English thoruȝ, þoruȝ, from Old English þuruh, a byform of Old English þurh, whence comes English through. The adjective derives from the preposition and adverb. The word developed a syllabic form in cases where the word was fully stressed: when it was used as an adverb, adjective, or noun, and less commonly when used as a preposition.

Words formed from thorough

Words that rhyme with thorough

Questions about thorough

What does thorough mean?
Thorough means painstaking and careful not to miss or omit any detail.
What is thorough in Hindi?
Thorough in Hindi is विस्तृत (vistŕt), संपूर्ण (sampūrṇ). See Thorough meaning in Hindi.
How do you use thorough in a sentence?
It's the most thorough artwork I have ever seen!
What part of speech is thorough?
Thorough can be an adjective, a preposition, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce thorough?
Thorough is pronounced /ˈθʌɹə/ (UK).

Words near thorough in the dictionary

  1. thoronol
  2. thorons
  3. thorosteenstrupine
  4. thorosteenstrupines
  5. thorotrast
  6. thorough
  7. thorough-
  8. thorough-going
  9. thorough-paced
  10. thorough-stitch
  11. thoroughbass

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thorough (page history and authors); Thorough (page history and authors); thorough (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); thorough (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); thorough (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); thorough (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); thorough (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); समीक्षा (Sanskrit) (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-uk-thorough.ogg, En-us-ne-thorough.ogg.

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