Word.ws English Dictionary

thorp

/θɔːp/US/θɔɹp/

thorp noun: a group of houses standing together in the country; a hamlet; a village.

Noun

thorp (plural thorps)

  1. (archaic) A group of houses standing together in the country; a hamlet; a village.
    • Within a little thorp I staid.1600, [Torquato Tasso], “(please specify |book=1 to 20)”, in Edward Fairefax [i.e., Edward Fairfax], transl., Godfrey of Bulloigne, or The Recouerie of Ierusalem. […], London: […] Ar[nold] Hatfield...
    • A plague upon the people fell, / A famine after laid them low, / Then thorpe and byre arose in fire, / For on them brake the sudden foe; […]1870, Alfred Tennyson, “The Victim”, in The Holy Grail and Other Poems, London: Strahan and Co., […], →OCLC, stanza I, page 193

Proper noun capitalized: Thorp

Thorp

  1. A surname.
  2. A ghost town in South Branch Township, Wexford County, Michigan, United States.
  3. A census-designated place in Kittitas County, Washington, United States.
  4. A city and town in Clark County, Wisconsin, United States.
  5. A suburb of Royton, Oldham borough, Greater Manchester, England (OS grid ref SD9108).

Forms of thorp

pluralthorps
alternative formthorpe

Origin of thorp

From Middle English thorp, throp, from Old English þorp, þrop (“farm, village”), from Proto-West Germanic *þorp, from Proto-Germanic *þurpą, *þrepą (“village, farmstead, troop”), from Proto-Indo-European *trab-, *treb- (“dwelling, room”). Doublet of dorf and dorp, and possibly also of troop and troupe.

* As an English surname, spelling variant of Thorpe. * As a North Germanic surname, spelling variant of Torp, from a placename derived from Old Norse þorp (“farm”).

Words formed from thorp

Words that rhyme with thorp

Questions about thorp

What does thorp mean?
Thorp means a group of houses standing together in the country; a hamlet; a village.
What part of speech is thorp?
Thorp can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce thorp?
Thorp is pronounced /θɔːp/ (UK).
What is the plural of thorp?
The plural of thorp is thorps.

Words near thorp in the dictionary

  1. thoroughways
  2. thoroughwort
  3. thoroughworts
  4. thorow
  5. thorowly
  6. thorp
  7. Thorp Arch
  8. Thorpdale
  9. Thorpdale South
  10. thorpe
  11. Thorpe Achurch

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thorp (page history and authors); Thorp (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-thorpe.wav.

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