thicket
Americannoun
-
thickets
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of thicket
before 1000; Old English thiccet (not recorded in ME), equivalent to thicce thick + -et noun suffix
Explanation
A thicket refers to a dense growth of bushes or trees — what you try to avoid by tending to the plants in your backyard. The word thicket comes from the word thick, which means close together or dense. If you are "thick as thieves," then you are close friends. A thicket is a growth of trees, bushes, or shrubbery that is very close together, often making it difficult for people to walk through or for Red Riding Hood to find her way out of to Grandmother's.
Vocabulary lists containing thicket
"The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell
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This Week in Words: December 2 - 8, 2017
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
It’s a thorny thicket that can keep us stagnant at the pivotal moments requiring the most courage.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 18, 2026
The unique pull of Silicon Valley, and its unrivaled density of AI workers, companies and investors, has kept the money rolling in despite California’s dense thicket of regulations and uncertainty about the proposed billionaire tax.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 20, 2026
A Burnham-led government should look at cutting the "thicket of regulation" and simplify the "stupendously complex" tax code, Haldane believes.
From BBC ● Jun. 26, 2026
The trade-off for markets, and indeed for the economy as a whole, is whether a Warsh-led Fed, and its pursuit of independence, can navigate the thicket of complexity expected over the coming year.
From Barron's ● Jun. 18, 2026
I sneaked around the side of the house and crawled into a thicket of bushes growing wild by the wall.
From "The Old Willis Place" by Mary Downing Hahn
The camera tracks the characters with startling skill and speed, from above, below, alongside and even behind as they rush through groves and thickets.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 17, 2025
Pygmy slow loris are a species of primate that comes from the rainforests and bamboo thickets of Vietnam, Laos, eastern Cambodia and southern China.
From BBC ● Jun. 16, 2025
Caruso, 66, has deep experience in building — or attempting to build — in cities across the region and navigating thickets of red tape.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 3, 2025
Traveling along the Paraná, Darwin observed thickets which “afford a retreat for capybaras and jaguars. The fear of the latter animal quite destroyed all pleasure in scrambling through the woods.”
From Salon ● Sep. 7, 2024
On one side of the road, thickets and small trees rose steeply, while on the other I could now glimpse through the foliage the distant countryside.
From "The Remains of the Day" by Kazuo Ishiguro
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
