thresh
Americanverb (used with object)
-
to separate the grain or seeds from (a cereal plant or the like) by some mechanical means, as by beating with a flail or by the action of a threshing machine.
-
to beat as if with a flail.
verb (used without object)
-
to thresh wheat, grain, etc.
-
to deliver blows as if with a flail.
noun
verb phrase
verb
-
to beat or rub stalks of ripe corn or a similar crop either with a hand implement or a machine to separate the grain from the husks and straw
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(tr) to beat or strike
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to toss and turn; thrash
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of thresh
before 900; Middle English threschen, thresshen, Old English threscan; cognate with German dreschen, Gothic thriskan; akin to Dutch dorsen, Old Norse thriskja
Explanation
To thresh is to harvest seeds from grain by beating or crushing it. Before the invention of machines to do this task, it took a huge amount of time to thresh grain by hand. To make this tedious task go faster, farmers used to thresh in groups, throwing threshing bees where neighbors worked together. Special sticks called flails were used to beat the seeds out of the grain, and it took about an hour to thresh a bushel of wheat. The threshing machine was invented in the late 1700s, and today most farmers thresh using a combine harvester, which harvests and threshes the grain right in the field.
Vocabulary lists containing thresh
Mythology
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The Good Earth
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Wolf Hollow
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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.
Traditionally in Vietnam, people would grow their own rice and thresh it, some boiling it in a clay or metal pot over a fire of leftover rice straw.
From New York Times • Nov. 11, 2021
In the absence of narrative tension, then, we are left with this thresh of rival perspectives, all generously delivered in the same third-person omniscient.
From Washington Post • Jun. 13, 2017
I left word with the maid that we were on no account to be disturbed and we sat down to thresh the whole thing out.
From The New Yorker • Mar. 13, 2017
Q: Does he thresh things out with you?
From US News • Jun. 5, 2015
Karl says that with this heat, I wrote to my uncle, my grain will be ready to thresh in about two weeks.
From "Hattie Big Sky" by Kirby Larson
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.
