Etymology

thick

T1H4I1C3K5

Today it means: Relatively great in extent from one surface to the opposite in its smallest solid dimension. Full definition →

Middle English thikke ← Old English þicce ← Proto-West Germanic *þikkwī
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European · inherited from*tégus“thick”
  2. Proto-Germanic · inherited from*þekuz“thick”
  3. Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*þikkwī
  4. Old English · inherited fromþicce“thick, dense”
  5. Middle English · inherited fromthikke
  6. English todaythick

From Middle English thikke, from Old English þicce (“thick, dense”), from Proto-West Germanic *þikkwī, from Proto-Germanic *þekuz (“thick”), from Proto-Indo-European *tégus (“thick”). Cognates Cognate with North Frisian sjok, tjok, tjuk, tschok (“thick”), Saterland Frisian tjuk (“thick”), West Frisian dik, tuuk (“thick”), Central Franconian deck (“thick”), Cimbrian dikh, dikhe (“thick”), Dutch dik (“thick”), German dick (“thick”), Luxembourgish déck (“thick”), Yiddish דיק (dik, “thick”), Danish tyk (“thick”), Elfdalian tiokk (“thick”), Faroese tjúkkur (“thick”), Icelandic þykkur (“thick”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk tjukk, tykk (“thick”), Scanian tjykker (“thick”), Swedish tjock (“thick”); also Cornish and Welsh tew (“thick”), Irish tiubh, tiugh (“thick”), Manx çhiu (“thick”), Scottish Gaelic tiugh (“thick”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.