thicket
(ˈθɪkɪt)
Also 1 þiccet, 6 thykette, 7 thickett.
[OE. þiccet, neut., f. þicce thick + -et, denominative suffix (as in emn-et plain, r{yacu}met space).]
A dense growth of shrubs, underwood, and small trees; a place where low trees or bushes grow thickly together; a brake. Cf. thick n. 5.
| a 1000 Ps. (Spelm.) xxviii[i]. 9 Stefn drihtnes awrihþ þiccettu [Lamb. þiccetu]. 1530 Tindale Gen. xxii. 13 A ram caught by the hornes in a thykette. 1530 Palsgr. 280/1 Thicket or a forest, boscaige. 1555 Eden Decades 57 They founde a greate thicket of reedes. 1593 Shakes. 3 Hen. VI, iv. v. 3 Leaue off to wonder why I drew you hither, Into this cheefest Thicket of the Parke. 1667 Milton P.L. iv. 681 How often from the steep Of echoing Hill or Thicket have we heard Celestial voices to the midnight air..Singing. 1711 Addison Spect. No. 56 ¶3 This huge Thicket of Thorns and Brakes was designed as a Kind of Fence. 1855 Kingsley Heroes iii. (1868) 32 They sang like nightingales among the thickets. |
b. transf. and
fig.| 1582 Stanyhurst æneis ii. (Arb.) 54, I run forward too rush throgh thicket of armoure. 1612 Webster White Devil ii. i. 79 I'le meete thee Even in a thicket of thy ablest men. 1657 S. Purchas Pol. Flying-Ins. xvii. 111 They are quickly be-wildred in a thicket of errors. 1698 Fryer Acc. E. India & P. 45 A Thicket of twenty Sail of our Enemies were discovered. 1821 Scott Kenilw. xiii, His wild and overgrown thicket of beard was now restrained to two small mustachios. 1866 J. Martineau Ess. I. 52 We entangle ourselves in a thicket of ever-growing problems. |
c. attrib. and
Comb., as
thicket-maze,
thicket-haunting.
| 1813 Scott Rokeby iv. ii, Where the thicket-groupes recede. 1837 Stanley Gipsies 136 Or track old Jordan through his thicket maze. 1850 Allingham Poems, Music-master ii. xv, The thicket-tangling, tenderest briar-rose. 1892 Guardian 11 May 706/2 Along the courtly mere of thicket isles. |
Hence
ˈthicketed a., occupied or covered by thickets;
ˈthicketful, as many or as much as fills a thicket;
ˈthickety a., abounding in thickets.
| c 1624 Chapman Homer, Hymn to Bacchus 140 In ivies and in baies All over *thicketed. 1835 W. Irving Tour Prairies xxxiii, The same kind of rough, hilly, thicketed country. |
| 1887 J. Service Dr. Duguid 270 Sweet sounds..From out the *thicketful of singing throats. |
| 1640 in Maryland Hist. Mag. (1910) V. 374 The Neck of land..lyeing between *thicketty Creek on the North, hog pen Creek on the South. 1740 J. E. Oglethorpe Jrnl. 14 May in Coll. S. Carolina Hist. Soc. (1887) IV. 152 They got into such thickety ground that they could not overtake them. 1846 A. Marsh Emilia Wyndham (1848) 349 Very fine timber and thicketty woods. 1865 W. G. Palgrave Arabia I. 238 Broken and thickety ground in front. |