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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

thorough.

Painstaking and careful not to miss or omit any detail.

8 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈθʌɹə/British, Received-Pronunciation, Southern, Standard/ˈθʊɹə/Northern-England/ˈθʌɾə/Scotland, Wales/ˈθʌɹoʊ/General-American
  1. Painstaking and careful not to miss or omit any detail.

    The Prime Minister announced a thorough investigation into the death of a father-of-two in police custody.
    Not enough! Your work has to be thorougher than this.
  2. Utter; complete; absolute.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English thoruȝ, þoruȝ, from Old English þuruh, a byform of Old English þurh, whence comes English through. The adjective derives from the preposition and adverb. The word developed a syllabic form in cases where the word was fully stressed: when it was used as an adverb, adjective, or noun, and less commonly when used as a preposition.

prep/ˈθʌɹə/British, Received-Pronunciation, Southern, Standard/ˈθʊɹə/Northern-England/ˈθʌɾə/Scotland, Wales/ˈθʌɹoʊ/General-American
  1. Through.

    archaic
Where this word comes from

From Middle English thoruȝ, þoruȝ, from Old English þuruh, a byform of Old English þurh, whence comes English through. The adjective derives from the preposition and adverb. The word developed a syllabic form in cases where the word was fully stressed: when it was used as an adverb, adjective, or noun, and less commonly when used as a preposition.

noun/ˈθʌɹə/British, Received-Pronunciation, Southern, Standard/ˈθʊɹə/Northern-England/ˈθʌɾə/Scotland, Wales/ˈθʌɹoʊ/General-American
  1. A furrow between two ridges, to drain off the surface water.

    UK · dialectal
Where this word comes from

From Middle English thoruȝ, þoruȝ, from Old English þuruh, a byform of Old English þurh, whence comes English through. The adjective derives from the preposition and adverb. The word developed a syllabic form in cases where the word was fully stressed: when it was used as an adverb, adjective, or noun, and less commonly when used as a preposition.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.