thresh
verb
Simple meaning
To separate the grain from the straw or husks by mechanical beating, with a flail or machinery, or by driving animals over them.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
threhshIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈθɹɛʃ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
transitiveagriculture
To separate the grain from the straw or husks (chaff) by mechanical beating, with a flail or machinery, or by driving animals over them.
Move or stir about violently
intransitiveliterary
To violently toss the limbs about.
transitiveliterary
To beat soundly, usually with some tool such as a stick or whip; to drub.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (transitive, agriculture) To separate the grain from the straw or husks (chaff) by mechanical beating, with a flail or machinery, or by driving animals over them.
Used this way, thresh is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is an engineering use: it is a working term used for accuracy on the job.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Technical/specialist writing
- Science
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Nearby words
- lam , more casual, better suited to speech than writing
- toss , more casual, better suited to speech than writing
- convulse , rarer, so it draws attention
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Similar Words, What’s the Difference?
Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A floor or ground area for threshing or treading out grain.
A farm machine for separating seeds or grain from the husks and straw.
Move or stir about violently.
Large pelagic shark of warm seas with a whiplike tail used to round up small fish on which to feed.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.