thick and thin

English

Noun

thick and thin (uncountable)

  1. Both thickets and thin woodland; (through) all obstacles in a path.
    • c. 1390, Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Reeve's Tale", Canterbury Tales, Ellesmere ms:
      Toward the fen / ther wilde Mares renne / fforth with wehee / thurgh thikke and thurgh thenne […]
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.1:
      His tyreling Jade he fiersly forth did push / Through thicke and thin, both over banck and bush […]
  2. (idiomatic) Both good and bad times.
    "I must follow him through thick and thin." - Miguel de Cervantes[1]
    • Hudibras
      Through thick and thin she followed him.
    • Coleridge
      He became the panegyrist, through thick and thin, of a military frenzy.

Derived terms

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.

References

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.