Definition of "thing"

Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us...

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Luke 1:1

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.

2013 June 21, Oliver Burkeman, “The tao of tech”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 2, page 48

To go to bed late, to rise late, to breakfast late, to dine late, and to visit late, is to be “quite the thing,” or in good English, which you may understand better than the first phrase, to be in the fashion.

1802, Anne Ormsby, "Memoirs of a Family in Swisserland", quoted in The Monthly Review, Or, Literary Journal page 45

After a slow start it became the thing to do; 'everyone went to see Pbi-Pbi, no one talked of anything but Pbi-Pbi […] '

2002, Roger Nichols, The Harlequin Years: Music in Paris 1917-1929, Univ of California Press

Now I don't know how many of those male flight attendants are male lesbians -- you know... (Laughter) Well, it's a thing. I mean, there's a -- it's a -- there's a feminist professor down in Tampa who's discovered a male lesbianAccessed via COCA

1993 November 24, The Rush Limbaugh Show (radio), Rush Limbaugh (actor)

Frequent statements of the kind “'Race' is not a thing”, “'races,' put simply, do not exist”, “'race' (as each essay subtly shows) simply does not exist” aim to discredit Todorov's claim that a relapse to an ontology of race is at place […]

2014, Marianna Papastephanou, Torill Strand, Anne Pirrie, Philosophy as a Lived Experience

Clémence would say that his style was normcore before normcore became a thing. She had to admit that she still found him attractive.

2014, Harper Lin, Croissant Murder

Conservative philosophy, in other words, is, as we say now, a thing and deserves a serious listen.

2019, Adam Gopnik, A Thousand Small Sanities, Riverrun, published 2019, page 88

And he invited us all in there and then he kicked the girls out a little bit later and brought me in a couple things of alcohol. And just before he brought in my second bottle of alcohol […]Accessed via COCA

1998 March 24, Geraldo (television)

I remember my friend Ben saying in the old days that he would never go to Costco and buy one of those big things of toilet paper […]Accessed via COCA

2011, 1:19:48 from the start, in We Were Here

I came home and ate a whole thing of ice cream.

2011, Juliette Fay, Deep Down True: A Novel, Penguin

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

1962 , William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch, New York: Grove Press, page 150

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

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

Tool talk [is] not my thing.

2002, Joss Whedon et al, "Never Leave Me", Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV episode)

The Internet isn't my thing. I so much rather talk on the phone.

2006, Corbin Bleu, interview with Tigerbeat magazine

But I'm just a guy from Missoula, Montana, doing my thing, going down the road like everybody else.

2006, David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish, Tarcher 2006, "Darkness", p. 91

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

I can screw you in front of everyone. I don't care, we have a thing going on, you know. I love you,” she said.

2020, David Gomadza, EVELINA: The Alpha