thicket

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   something so dense as to be impenetrable

   The thicket of protesters prevented many people from getting into the building.

2. 2
   noun

   a dense growth of bushes

   While we were hiking, we had to go around a thicket that was too thick to walk through.

3. 3
   noun

   A dense, but generally small, growth of shrubs, bushes or small trees; a copse.

   Suddenly from a lumpy tussock of old grass some twenty yards in front of them, with black-tipped ears erect and long hinder limbs throwing it forward, started a hare. It bolted for a thicket of alders.

4. 4
   noun

   A dense aggregation of other things, concrete or abstract.

   He had to complete a thicket of paperwork before he was allowed to join the company.

5. 5
   noun

   The collection of many small linked files created when a document is saved in HTML format by some word processors and web site creation software.

Etymology

From Middle English *thikket, from Old English þiccet, from þicce (“thick”) + Old English nominal suffix -et. Compare similar German Dickicht (“thicket”), which is first attested in the 17th century, however. Compare typologically Bulgarian гъстак (gǎstak), Macedonian густеж (gustež), Czech houští, Polish gęstwina (< Proto-Slavic *gǫstъ); Latin dūmus (akin to dense).