- head: also thick-head, thick-skull,
thick-pate, thick sconce, thick-skin, thick-wits, etc. The corresponding adjectival forms = dull, stupid, hidebound.
1582. Stanyhurst, Ded. [Arber], 9. What thinck you of thee thick skyn that made this. . . .
1592. Shakspeare, Mid. Night's Dream, iii. 2. 13. The shallowest thick-skin of that barren sort. Ibid. (1598), 2 Henry IV., ii. 4. 262. He a good wit? hang him, baboon! his wit's as thick as Tewkesbury mustard.
1599. Hall, Satires, i. 8. Thick-skin ears, and undiscerning eyne.
1603. Hayward, Answer to Doleman, iv. I omit your thick errour in putting no difference between a magistrate and a king.
c. 1616. Drayton, Sacrifice to Apollo. The thick-brain'd audience lively to awake.
1668. Dryden, All for Love, iii. 1. This thick-skulled hero. (1679), Persius, i. 166. Pleas'd to hear their thick-skulled judges cry, Well movd!
d. 1718. Penn, Liberty of Conscience, v. What if you think our reasons thick, and our ground of separation mistaken.
1857. Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays, i. vii. I told you how it would be. What a thick I was to come!
1897. Marshall, Pomes, 75. She was thick . . . fairly sosselled on beer.
2. (common).—Porter: ironically said to be 'a decoction of brewers' aprons.'
3. (streets').—Cocoa.
Adj. (colloquial).—1. Intimate or (Scots) 'chief': e.g., 'As thick as thieves,' 'as thick as inkle-weavers,' q.v. (Grose).
1525-37. Ellis, Letters [Oliphant, New Eng., i. 475. We see the expression] the thickest of the theves.
1835. Dana, Before the Mast, 68. I told the second mate, with whom I had been pretty thick when he was before the mast, that I would do it.
1837. Barham, Ingoldsby Legends, i. 270. He . . . was thought to be thick with the Man in the Moon.
1854-5. Thackeray, Newcomes, xxiv. Newcome and I are not very thick together.
1860. Eliot, Mill on the Floss, ii. 6. Don't you be getting too thick with him—he's got his father's blood in him too.
Adv. (colloquial).—Out of the common; extraordinary; a general intensive (in quot. 1563 = solid). Hence to lay it on thick = to exaggerate; to surfeit with praise: also to lay it on with a trowel: cf. wide; got 'em thick = very drunk: see Screwed; a bit thick = rather indecent.
1563. Foxe, Acts and Monuments [Cattley], 260. [Something cost] a hundred pounds thick.
1655. Fuller, Ch. Hist. iii., iv. 24. His reign was not onely long for continuance, fifty-six years, but also thick for remarkable mutations happening therein.
1874. Siliad, 204. He complains I lay it on too thick.
1885. New York Herald, 22 June. The Know-Nothings were . . . laying it on thick that 'Americans shall rule America.'
1888. Ward, Elsmere, xviii. He had been giving the squire a full and particular account . . . Henslowe lays it on thick—paints with a will.
1893. Emerson, Lippo, xvi. She knew all the cant, and used to palaver thick to the slaveys.
1897. Marshall, Pomes, 63. The exercise required of him was thick. Ibid., 76. The fun . . . was the thickest I've met. Ibid., 95. I've got 'em thick he said. . . . And . . . went upstairs to bed.
Through thick and thin,
phr. (colloquial).—Thoroughly;
steadily; at all costs. Hence
thick-and-thin (adj.) =
sincere, out-and-out (q.v.).
[Orig. over rough or smooth
places; i.e., through coppice or
sparse land.]
1359. Gaytrigg, Relig. Pieces [E.E.T.S.], 99. [Fiends will not cease] for thin ne thik.
