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)

A created thing, whether animate or inanimate; a creation.

* 1633 , (John Donne), "Sapho to Philænis":

Thoughts, my mindes creatures , often are with thee, / But I, their maker, want their libertie.

* 1646 , (Thomas Browne), Pseudodoxia Epidemica , I.10:

the natural truth of God is an artificial erection of Man, and the Creator himself but a subtile invention of the Creature .

* {{quote-book, year=1922, author=(Ben Travers), title=(A Cuckoo in the Nest)

, chapter=1 citation , passage=She was like a Beardsley Salome , he had said. And indeed she had the narrow eyes and the high cheekbone of that creature , and as nearly the sinuosity as is compatible with human symmetry.}}

A living being; an animal or human.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-08, volume=407, issue=8839, page=55, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Obama goes troll-hunting , passage=According to this saga of intellectual-property misanthropy, these creatures [patent trolls] roam the business world, buying up patents and then using them to demand extravagant payouts from companies they accuse of infringing them. Often, their victims pay up rather than face the costs of a legal battle.}}

A being subservient to or dependent upon another.

* 1988 , James McPherson, Battle Cry for Freedom , Oxford 2003, p. 240:

they, too, despite the appearance of being creatures rather than creators of the Union, could assert the prior sovereignty of their states, for each had formed a state constitution […] before petitioning Congress for admission to the Union.