thick
n. uncountablen. the middle of a busy or difficult situation where everything is happening at once. You use this when you are right in the center of the action.
n. the most intense, active, or crowded part of a situation or place. Typically used in the idiomatic construction 'in the thick of'.
He was right in the thick of the crowd.
During the protest, the reporter stayed in the thick of the action to get the best footage.
Navigating the thick of the negotiations required a level of diplomatic finesse that few of the junior associates had yet developed.
From Middle English thikke, from Old English þicce (“thick, dense”), from Proto-West Germanic þikkwī, from Proto-Germanic þekuz (“thick”), from Proto-Indo-European *tégus (“thick”). Cognates Cognate with North Frisian sjok, tjok, tjuk, tschok (“thick”), Saterland Frisian tjuk (“thick”), West Frisian dik, tuuk (“thick”), Central Franconian deck (“thick”), Cimbrian dikh, dikhe (“thick”), Dutch dik (“thick”), German dick (“thick”), Luxembourgish déck (“thick”), Yiddish דיק (dik, “thick”), Danish tyk (“thick”), Elfdalian tiokk (“thick”), Faroese tjúkkur (“thick”), Icelandic þykkur (“thick”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk tjukk, tykk (“thick”), Scanian tjykker (“thick”), Swedish tjock (“thick”); also Cornish and Welsh tew (“thick”), Irish tiubh, tiugh (“thick”), Manx çhiu (“thick”), Scottish Gaelic tiugh (“thick”).
Almost exclusively used in the prepositional phrase 'in the thick of'.