thickset
Part of speech: adj
noun
Morphological type: compound
Etymology: From thick + set.
Compound parts: thick
set
Inflected forms:
form: more thickset
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most thickset
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: thick-set
pos: adj
tags: alternative
form: thicksets
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: thick-set
pos: noun
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: Having a relatively short, heavy build.
pos: adj
examples: a thickset, muscular figure
a thickset workhorse
He was a thick set man, and of a strong Constitution […]
[…] he directed me to a small chink in the board partition, through which I could see a thick set brawny fellow, with a fierce countenance,
Ralph, who was a thickset clownish figure, arrived at his full strength, and conscious of the most complete personal superiority, laughed contemptuously at the threats of the slight-made stripling.
The contrast was as striking as it could have been eighteen years before, when Rigg was a most unengaging kickable boy, and Raffles was the rather thick-set Adonis of bar-rooms and back-parlors.
More than ever Min hated her own thickset, healthy body, her round, red face with its small gray eyes, the mop of auburn hair which Aunt Julie braided so tightly […]
The glass door opened and there entered a thick-set, mud-bespattered, weather-beaten dock laborer with bare head and bare feet.
Things edible would always be respected by a man who had nearly starved to death. The laborers, too, in white smocks, broad and heavy, a thickset personnel, butchers’ men.
Standing in her entrance, two men in white silk suits and butterfly-looking lace bow ties, black instrument cases by their side and black-brimmed white hats in their hands–my father, Nestor Castillo, thin and broad-shouldered, and Uncle Cesar, thickset and immense.
gloss: Densely crowded together; made up of things that are densely crowded together; closely planted.
pos: adj
examples: a thickset wood
a thickset hedge
1581, Thomas Newton (translator), Thebais in Seneca His Tenne Tragedies, London: Thomas Marsh, Act 2, p. 48,
[…] let me be allowde
To lurke behinde this Craggy Rocke, or els my selfe to hyde
On backside of some thickset hedge:
1612, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, London: M. Lownes et al., Song 1, p. 11,
[…] Corineus ran
With slaughter through the thick-set squadrons of the foes;
[…] though his Beard not oft corrected,
Yet neare it growes, not like a Beard neglected
From head to heele, his body hath all over,
A Quick-set, Thick-set nat’rall hairy cover.
The beauteous Love-Eye burning in the Heart;
From whence Loves Centres endless multiply,
As thick-set Spangles of the Sky,
Raising a Sting of Joy in ev’ry Part.
His [the boar’s] Neck shoots up a thick-set thorny Wood;
His bristled Back a Trench impal’d appears,
And stands erected, like a Field of Spears.
My heart is like an appletree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
It was for the arc of lanterned boats to close in and to form the thickset audience, armed and impenetrable.
gloss: Densely covered (with something).
pos: adj
examples: a gully thickset with brambles
1583, John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, London: John Day, Book 4, “The tragicall historie of Gregorie the vij. otherwise named Hildebrand,” p. 177,
[…] in a vessell being thick set with sharpe nayles, he tormented him to the poynt of death:
The sides of the Church were so thick set with Pictures, that it seem’d to be made in imitation of Plato’s Den, where one could see nothing but shadowes.
A huge cherry-tree grew outside, so close that its boughs tapped against the house, and it was so thick-set with blossoms that hardly a leaf was to be seen.
[…] he came to the house of the King of the Gnomes, which was inside a mountain and as thickset with jewels as the grass with dew on a fine morning.
gloss: A thick hedge.
pos: noun
tags: countable
obsolete
examples: 1858, Edward Bulwer-Lytton (as Pisistratus Caxton), What Will He Do with It? Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, Volume 4, Book 11, Chapter 7, p. 294,
Had Darrell been placed amidst the circumstances that make happy the homes of earnest men, Darrell would have been mirthful; had Waife been placed amongst the circumstances that concentrate talent, and hedge round life with trained thicksets and belting laurels, Waife would have been grave.
gloss: A stout, twilled cotton cloth; a fustian corduroy, or velveteen.
pos: noun
tags: historical
uncountable
examples: 1812, George Crabbe, Tales, London: J. Hatchard, Tale 4, “Procrastination,” p. 73,
When he, with thickset coat of Badge-man’s blue,
Moves near her shaded silk of changeful hue;
1829, anonymous contributor, “A Day at Fontainebleau.—The Royal Hunt,” The Monthly Magazine, New Series, Volume 7, No. 37, January 1829, p. 12,
His breeches were of the homeliest thickset;
gloss: A piece of clothing made from this fabric.
pos: noun
tags: countable
historical
examples: […] his coat was originally what is called a thickset, but out at the elbows;
I had observed that our landlord wore, on that memorable morning, a pair of bran new velveteens instead of his ancient thicksets.
Translations: