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

(en noun)

An advance or movement made from one foot to the other; a pace.

*

*:Turning back, then, toward the basement staircase, she began to grope her way through blinding darkness, but had taken only a few uncertain steps when, of a sudden, she stopped short and for a little stood like a stricken thing, quite motionless save that she quaked to her very marrow in the grasp of a great and enervating fear.

A rest, or one of a set of rests, for the foot in ascending or descending, as a stair, or a rung of a ladder.

*Sir (Henry Wotton) (1568-1639)

*:The breadth of every single step or stair should be never less than one foot.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=4 , passage=One morning I had been driven to the precarious refuge afforded by the steps of the inn, after rejecting offers from the Celebrity to join him in a variety of amusements. But even here I was not free from interruption, for he was seated on a horse-block below me, playing with a fox terrier.}}

A running board where passengers step to get on and off the bus.

:

The space passed over by one movement of the foot in walking or running. Used also figuratively of any kind of progress.

:

*(Isaac Newton) (1642-1727)

*:To derive two or three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how the properties and actions of all corporeal things follow from those manifest principles, would be a very great step in philosophy.

A small space or distance.

:

A print of the foot; a footstep; a footprint; track.

A gait; manner of walking.

:

*1900 , , (The House Behind the Cedars) , Chapter I,

*:Warwick passed through one of the wide brick arches and traversed the building with a leisurely step .

Proceeding; measure; action; act.

*(Alexander Pope) (1688-1744)

*:The reputation of a man depends on the first steps he makes in the world.

*(William Cowper) (1731-1800)

*:Beware of desperate steps . The darkest day, Live till to-morrow, will have passed away.

*(George Washington Cable) (1844-1925)

*:I have lately taken steps to relieve the old gentleman's distresses.

(lb) A walk; passage.

*(John Dryden)

*:Conduct my steps to find the fatal tree.

(lb) A portable framework of stairs, much used indoors in reaching to a high position.

(lb) A framing in wood or iron which is intended to receive an upright shaft; specif., a block of wood, or a solid platform upon the keelson, supporting the heel of the mast.

(lb) One of a series of offsets, or parts, resembling the steps of stairs, as one of the series of parts of a cone pulley on which the belt runs.

(lb) A bearing in which the lower extremity of a spindle or a vertical shaft revolves.

(lb) The interval between two contiguous degrees of the scale.

:Usage note: The word tone is often used as the name of this interval; but there is evident incongruity in using tone for indicating the interval between tones. As the word scale is derived from the Italian scala , a ladder, the intervals may well be called steps.

(lb) A change of position effected by a motion of translation.

:(William Kingdon Clifford)