Noun

(en noun)

That which is considered to exist as a separate entity, object, quality or concept.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-21, author=(Oliver Burkeman)

, volume=189, issue=2, page=48, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= The tao of tech , passage=The dirty secret of the internet is that all this distraction and interruption is immensely profitable. Web companies like to boast about […], or offering services that let you […], "share the things you love with the world" and so on. But the real way to build a successful online business is to be better than your rivals at undermining people's control of their own attention.}}

A word, symbol, sign, or other referent that can be used to refer to any entity.

An individual object or distinct entity.

(informal) Something that is normal or generally recognised.

(legal) Whatever can be owned.

The latest fad or fashion.

(in the plural) Clothes, possessions or equipment.

(informal) A unit or container, usually containing edible goods.

(informal) A problem, dilemma, or complicating factor.

(slang) A penis.

* 1959 , , (Naked Lunch) , 50th anniversary edition (2009), p. 126:

“Oh Gertie it’s true. It’s all true. They’ve got a horrid gash instead of a thrilling thing .”

A living being or creature.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Revenge of the nerds , passage=Think of banking today and the image is of grey-suited men in towering skyscrapers. Its future, however, is being shaped in converted warehouses and funky offices in San Francisco, New York and London, where bright young things in jeans and T-shirts huddle around laptops, sipping lattes or munching on free food.}}

That which matters; the crux.

* 1914 , Eugene Gladstone O'Neill, The Movie Man] [playscript:

Don’t forget to have Gomez postpone that shooting thing . (in reference to the execution of Fernandez)

(chiefly, historical) A public assembly or judicial council in a Germanic country.

* 1974 , Jón Jóhannesson, A History of the Old Icelandic Commonwealth: Íslendinga Saga , translated by Haraldur Bessason, page 46:

In accordance with Old Germanic custom men came to the thing fully armed, [...]

* 1974', Jakob Benediktsson, ''Landnám og upphaf allsherjarríkis'', in ''Saga Íslands'', quoted in '''1988 by Jesse L. Byock in ''Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas, and Power , page 85:

The goðar'' seem both to have received payment of ''thing-fararkaup from those who stayed home and at the same time compensated those who went to the thing , and it cannot be seen whether they had any profit from these transactions.

* 1988 , Jesse L. Byock, Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas, and Power , page 59:

All Icelandic things were skap-thing , meaning that they were governed by established procedure and met at regular legally designated intevals at predetermined meeting places.

Noun

(social) Effectiveness.

# (countable) Capability or influence.

#*

An incident which happened about this time will set the characters of these two lads more fairly before the discerning reader than is in the power of the longest dissertation.

#*

Thwackum, on the contrary, maintained that the human mind, since the fall, was nothing but a sink of iniquity, till purified and redeemed by grace.The favourite phrase of the former, was the natural beauty of virtue; that of the latter, was the divine power of grace.

#* {{quote-book, year=1913, author=

, title=Lord Stranleigh Abroad, chapter=4 citation , passage=“[…] That woman is stark mad, Lord Stranleigh. Her own father recognised it when he bereft her of all power in the great business he founded. […]”}}

#* 1998 , (Eckhart Tolle), (The Power of Now)

Past and future obviously have no reality of their own. Just as the moon has no light of its own, but can only reflect the light of the sun, so are past and future only pale reflections of the light, power , and reality of the eternal present.

# Control, particularly legal or political (jurisdiction).

#* 1949', Eric Blair, aka '''(George Orwell) , ''(Nineteen Eighty-Four)

The Party seeks power' entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in '''power'''. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only '''power''', pure '''power'''. [...] We know that no one ever seizes '''power''' with the intention of relinquishing it. '''Power''' is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of '''power''' is ' power .

#* 2005 , Columbia Law Review , April

In the face of expanding federal power , California in particular struggled to maintain control over its Chinese population.

#* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Can China clean up fast enough? , passage=It has jailed environmental activists and is planning to limit the power of judicial oversight by handing a state-approved body a monopoly over bringing environmental lawsuits.}}

# (chiefly in the plural) The people in charge of legal or political power, the government.

# An influential nation, company, or other such body.

#* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-16, author= John Vidal

, volume=189, issue=10, page=8, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Dams endanger ecology of Himalayas , passage=Most of the Himalayan rivers have been relatively untouched by dams near their sources. Now the two great Asian powers , India and China, are rushing to harness them as they cut through some of the world's deepest valleys.}}

(physical, uncountable) Effectiveness.

# Physical force or strength.

# Electricity or a supply of electricity.

#* {{quote-book, year=1913, author=

, title=Lord Stranleigh Abroad, chapter=4 citation , passage=“My father had ideas about conservation long before the United States took it up.

#* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Out of the gloom , passage=[Rural solar plant] schemes are of little help to industry or other heavy users of electricity. Nor is solar power yet as cheap as the grid. For all that, the rapid arrival of electric light to Indian villages is long overdue. When the national grid suffers its next huge outage, as it did in July 2012 when hundreds of millions were left in the dark, look for specks of light in the villages.}}

# A measure of the rate of doing work or transferring energy.

# A rate to magnify an optical image by a lens or mirror.

(mathematics) Effectiveness.

# A product of equal factors. Notation and usage: x''^''n'', read as "''x'' to the power of ''n''" or "''x'' to the ''n''th power", denotes ''x'' × ''x'' × ... × ''x'', in which ''x'' appears ''n'' times, where ''n is called the exponent; the definition is extended to non-integer and complex exponents.

# (set theory) Cardinality.

# (statistics) The probability that a statistical test will reject the null hypothesis when the alternative hypothesis is true.

(biblical, in plural) In Christian angelology, an intermediate level of angels, ranked above archangels, but exact position varies by classification scheme.