Thing
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Words and Things (1959) by Ernest Gellner |
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Thing may refer to:
In philosophy:
- An object (philosophy), being, or entity
- Thing-in-itself (or noumenon), the reality that underlies perceptions, a term coined by Immanuel Kant
- Thing theory
In fiction:
- Things: A Story of the Sixties (1965) by Georges Perec
- The Thing, a 1982 cult classic sci-fi/horror film
- Thing (The Addams Family)
Etymology
From Middle English thing, from Old English þing, from Proto-West Germanic *þing, from Proto-Germanic *þingą.
Compare West Frisian ding, Low German Ding, Dutch ding, German Ding, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian ting, Finnish tinki.
The word originally meant "assembly", then came to mean a specific issue discussed at such an assembly, and ultimately came to mean most broadly "an object". Compare Latin rēs, also meaning "legal matter", and same transition from Latin causa (“legal matter”) to "thing" in Romance languages. Modern use to refer to a Germanic assembly is likely influenced by cognates (from the same Proto-Germanic root) like Old Norse þing (“thing”), Danish ting, Swedish ting, and Old High German ding with this meaning.
See also
- Something (concept)
- Thing in itself
- Man is the measure of all things
- The Way Things Go by Peter Fischli & David Weiss
- "Do Your Thing"
- Everything is what it is and not another thing
