thresh
Americanverb (used with object)
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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.
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to beat as if with a flail.
verb (used without object)
-
to thresh wheat, grain, etc.
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to deliver blows as if with a flail.
noun
verb phrase
verb
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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
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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threshsimple
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threshessimple
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have threshedperfect
-
has threshedperfect
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am threshingprogressive
-
are threshingprogressive
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is threshingprogressive
-
have been threshingperfect progressive
-
has been threshingperfect progressive
Past
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threshedsimple
-
had threshedperfect
-
was threshingprogressive
-
were threshingprogressive
-
had been threshingperfect progressive
Future
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.
I didn’t know that, on a nineteenth-century farm, one might see horses “walking on treadmills that ran machines to compress hay into bundles and to thresh wheat.”
From The New Yorker • Dec. 13, 2016
This Sunday and next also offer the museum’s Matzo Factory, at 1, 1:45 and 2:30 p.m., in which children can thresh and grind wheat and bake their own matzos to take home for Passover.
From New York Times • Apr. 7, 2016
Q: Does he thresh things out with you?
From US News • Jun. 5, 2015
Winter brought the people indoors to weave yarn into fabric, sew clothing, thresh grain, and keep the fires going.
From Textbooks • Dec. 30, 2014
They were going to the next place where neighbors had stacked their wheat and wanted the machines to thresh it.
From "Little House in the Big Woods" by Laura Ingalls Wilder
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.
