Make Your Point > Archived Issues > THICKET

Send Make Your Point issues straight to your inbox.

explore the archives: Used figuratively, thicket plants a clear image in readers' minds. Let's check out a few of our previous plant-related words with the same power: 1. What's a literal taproot? What does it mean when one thing is the taproot of another? 2. What does a verdant landscape look like? What's something figuratively verdant? 3. What's going on in a fallow field? What does it mean when something abstract lies fallow? make your point with... "THICKET" Thickets are thick clumps of bushes or thick clumps of short trees. An abstract thicket, then, is anything that's hard to get through because it's thick, confusing, and all tangled or twisted up. Pronunciation: THICK it Part of speech: Countable noun. (Countable nouns, like "bottle," "piece," and "decision," are words for things that can be broken into exact units. You talk about "a bottle," "three pieces," and "many decisions." Likewise, talk about one thicket or multiple thickets.) Other forms: thickets, thickety, thicketed (full of thickets) How to use it: Because you have to struggle to make your way through a thicket, this word has a negative tone. Talk about a thicket of something: a thicket of laws or rules or regulations, a thicket of complex or contradictory expectations, a thicket of problems or errors, a thicket of enemies or critics, a thicket of opinions or emotions. Or, add an adjective before this word to clarify what it is: a narrative thicket, a political thicket, a regulatory thicket. You might decide to write about a thorny thicket, an impenetrable thicket, or a tangled thicket, but I prefer to let "thicket" do its job alone without any redundant adjectives. In fact, you can use this word without "of" and without a clarifying adjective when your meaning is clear: "They've carried on a detailed and very public series of arguments, but I won't let them lure me into that thicket." You might take your metaphor further and talk about hiding something in a thicket of things, ending up in a thicket or getting caught in a thicket, pruning back a thicket of something, hacking away at a thicket of something, finding your way out of a thicket, navigating around or staying well away from a particular thicket, and so on. examples: Play a song from 1999 and I'll wander helplessly into a thicket of high-school emotions. I'm hacking my way through this thicket of logical fallacies and warped sentence structures because I assume the author's point is hidden in there. Somewhere. study it now: Look away from the screen to explain the definition in your own words. You’ll know you understand what "thicket" means when you can explain it without saying "dense mess" or "situation that's hard to get through." try it out: Think of a time you faced a complex situation. Fill in the blanks: "When I (began/planned/wanted) to _____, I met with a thicket of _____."  Example: "When I began to work as an independent tutor, I met with a thicket of state regulations." before you review: Spend at least 20 seconds occupying your mind with the game below. Then try the review questions. Don’t go straight to the review now—let your working memory empty out first. Language Techniques: When language sounds beautiful or memorable, often there’s some particular technique responsible for that effect. Each day this month, I’ll give you a specific stylistic technique or quality, and I’d like you to recreate (as closely as you can) the quote that I’ve botched by removing it. We’ll work our way from the easiest to the hardest techniques. Enjoy! From yesterday: Maya Angelou makes use of isocolon in this statement: "When you learn, teach. When you get, give." Isocolon, like you see there, is the use of repeated phrases with equal length and similar rhythm. "Loose lips sink ships." Here's Cicero: "Friends, though absent, are still present." In the 1970's, folks enjoyed blithely stating that the way to fix pollution was by allowing contaminants to spread out. Restore the isocolon, and the statement becomes irresistibly catchy. Answer: "The solution to pollution is dilution." Try this one today: Asyndeton is the omission of the connecting words that you'd usually expect, like when Shakespeare described old age as a second infancy: "Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." (Note how there's no "and" or "or" before "sans everything.") And here's Zora Neale Hurston describing herself as a "brown bag of miscellany"--but make the tiny change necessary to restore her asyndeton and with it, the concision and drama: "A first-water diamond, an empty spool, bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, and a dried flower or two, still a little fragrant." review today's word: 1. The opposite of THICKET is A. CLEAR PATH B. VAST FIELD C. CLUTTERED ROOM 2. I found it impossible to _____ any meaning from this thicket. A. wring dry B. yank free C. absorb Answers are below. a final word: To be a sponsor and send your own message to readers of this list, please contact Liesl at Liesl@HiloTutor.com. Disclaimer: Word meanings presented here are expressed in plain language and are limited to common, useful applications only. Readers interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words are encouraged to check a dictionary. Likewise, word meanings, usage, and pronunciations are limited to American English; these elements may vary across world Englishes. Answers to review questions: 1. A 2. B