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PlainSpell

thing

/θɪŋ/noun, verb

thing is spelled T-H-I-N-G. The wrong spelling people search most is thign: about 40 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 81 of all searches for the word. Thing is a noun meaning “That which is considered to exist as a separate entity, object, quality or concept”. The plural of thing is things.

How many letters and syllables are in thing?

Letters5: T-H-I-N-G
Syllables1
In writing525 times per million words; the 184th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched2; the most searched, thign, about 40 Bing searches a month (all of them)
Rhymes with
Same letters

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How do you spell thing?

Thing is spelled T-H-I-N-G. 2 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 65 of the searches for thing in either form.

thingthe right spelling3,200 searches a month
thignn and g swapped40 searches a month
htingt and h swapped10 searches a month

Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

How common is thing?

Thing appears 525 times per million words in written English, the 184th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce thing?

  • US /θɪŋ/
  • /θiŋ/ [θiŋ ~ θɪ̝ŋ]
  • /fɪŋ/

Thing has one syllable.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-thing.ogg, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-thing.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

What rhymes with thing?

The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as thing from its last stressed vowel (/ɪŋ/):

Spelled with the same letters in another order: night.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of thing

  • things plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • thang
  • thin' informal
  • ting
  • thinging participle, present
  • thinged participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does thing mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

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

  2. 2

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

  3. 3

    An individual object or distinct entity.

  4. 4

    Whatever can be owned.

  5. 5

    Corporeal object.

  6. 6

    Possessions or equipment; stuff; gear.

    Hold on, let me just grab my things.

  7. 7

    datedThe latest fad or fashion.

    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.

  8. 8

    informalA custom or practice.

    Cheek kissing is a French thing; you get used to it after a while.

noun

as Thing
  1. 1

    A public assembly or judicial council in a Germanic country.

    The supreme political unit of the tribe was the assembly of its free male warriors. This assembly, called the "Thing", served as the court of highest instance for dealing with individuals who had broken fundamental elements of the tribal pa

  2. 2

    informalNickname or appellative for numerous "things", including fictional characters.

  3. 3

    USinformalslangNickname for the Volkswagen 181.

verb

  1. 1

    rareTo express as a thing; to reify.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Thing in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchchose, truc, machin (that which is considered to exist as a separate…), Thing (public assembly)
GermanDing, Sache, Gegenstand (that which is considered to exist as a separate…), Thing (public assembly)
Portuguesecoisa (that which is considered to exist as a separate…), thing (public assembly)
Spanishcosa, volancheje, volancheque, volanchete (that which is considered to exist as a separate…), thing (public assembly)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does thing come from?

From Middle English thing, from Old English þing, from Proto-West Germanic *þing, from Proto-Germanic *þingą.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after thing