different between thing vs information

English

Alternative forms

• thang (slang, pronunciation spelling, usually used to denote a known fad or popular activity)
• thin' (informal, pronunciation spelling)
• thinge (archaic)
• thynge (obsolete)
• ting (Caribbean creoles, MLE)

Etymology

From Middle English thing, from Old English þing, from Proto-Germanic *þing?; compare West Frisian ding, Low German Ding, Dutch ding, German Ding, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian ting. 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 r?s, 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”), Swedish ting, and Old High German ding with this meaning.

Pronunciation

• enPR: th?ng, IPA^(key): /???/
• Rhymes: -??

Noun

thing (plural things)

1. That which is considered to exist as a separate entity, object, quality or concept.
   • 1611 — King James Version of the Bible, Luke 1:1

     Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us...
2. A word, symbol, sign, or other referent that can be used to refer to any entity.
3. An individual object or distinct entity.
4. (informal) A genuine concept, entity or phenomenon; something that actually exists (often contrary to expectation or belief). [from 20th c.]
   • 2014, Marianna Papastephanou, Torill Strand, Anne Pirrie, Philosophy as a Lived Experience

     Frequent statements of the kind “'Race' is not a thing”, “'races,' put simply, do not exist”, “'race' (as each essay subtly shows) simply does not exist” aim to discredit Todorov's claim that a relapse to an ontology of race is at place […]

   • 2019, Adam Gopnik, A Thousand Small Sanities, Riverrun 2019, p. 88:

     Conservative philosophy, in other words, is, as we say now, a thing and deserves a serious listen.

5. (law)
   1. Whatever can be owned.
   2. Corporeal object.
6. (somewhat dated, with the) The latest fad or fashion.
   • 1802, Anne Ormsby, "Memoirs of a Family in Swisserland", quoted in The Monthly Review, Or, Literary Journal page 45:

     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.

   • 2002, Roger Nichols, The Harlequin Years: Music in Paris 1917-1929, Univ of California Press (?ISBN)

     After a slow start it became the thing to do; 'everyone went to see Pbi-Pbi, no one talked of anything but Pbi-Pbi […] '

7. (in the plural) Clothes, possessions or equipment.

8. (informal) A unit or container, usually containing edible goods.
   • 2011, Juliette Fay, Deep Down True: A Novel, Penguin (?ISBN)

     I came home and ate a whole thing of ice cream.

9. (informal) A problem, dilemma, or complicating factor.

10. (slang) A penis.
    • 1959, William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch, 50th anniversary edition (2009), p. 126:

      “Oh Gertie it’s true. It’s all true. They’ve got a horrid gash instead of a thrilling thing.”

11. A living being or creature.

12. That which matters; the crux.

13. Used after a noun to refer dismissively to the situation surrounding the noun's referent.
    • 1914, Eugene Gladstone O'Neill, The Movie Man [playscript]:

      Don’t forget to have Gomez postpone that shooting thing. (in reference to the execution of Fernandez)

14. (informal) That which is favoured; personal preference. (Used in possessive constructions.)
15. (chiefly historical) A public assembly or judicial council in a Germanic country.
    • 1974, Jón Jóhannesson, A History of the Old Icelandic Commonwealth: Íslendinga Saga, translated by Haraldur Bessason, page 46:

      In accordance with Old Germanic custom men came to the thing fully armed, [...]

    • 1974, Jakob Benediktsson, Landnám og upphaf allsherjarríkis, in Saga Íslands, quoted in 1988 by Jesse L. Byock in Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas, and Power, page 85:

      The goðar seem both to have received payment of thing-fararkaup from those who stayed home and at the same time compensated those who went to the thing, and it cannot be seen whether they had any profit from these transactions.

    • 1988, Jesse L. Byock, Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas, and Power, page 59:

      All Icelandic things were skap-thing, meaning that they were governed by established procedure and met at regular legally designated intevals at predetermined meeting places.

16. (informal) A romantic relationship.

Synonyms

• (referent that can be used to refer to any entity): item, stuff (uncountable equivalent), yoke (Ireland)
• (penis): see Thesaurus:penis
• (personal preference): see Thesaurus:predilection

Derived terms

Related terms

• diminutives: thingy / thingie, thingo [Aus]

Translations

Further reading

• thing in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• thing in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Verb

thing (third-person singular simple present things, present participle thinging, simple past and past participle thinged)

1. (rare) To express as a thing; to reify.

Anagrams

• Night, night

Khumi Chin

Etymology

From Proto-Kuki-Chin *thi?, from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *si?. Cognates include Mizo thing and Zou sing.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /t???/

Noun

thing

1. firewood

References

• K. E. Herr (2011) The phonological interpretation of minor syllables, applied to Lemi Chin?^[1], Payap University, page 44

Middle English

Alternative forms

• thinge, ðhing

Etymology

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

Noun

thing (plural thinges)

1. thing

Descendants

• English: thing
• Scots: thing, ting, hing
• Yola: dhing

References

• “thing, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Mizo

Etymology

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *si?. Akin to Khumi Chin thing.

Noun

thing

1. tree
2. wood
3. firewood

References

• Matisoff, James A., Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman, University of California Press.

Old Dutch

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *þing?.

Noun

thing n

1. thing, object
2. case, matter, issue

Inflection

Descendants

• Middle Dutch: dinc
  • Dutch: ding
    • Afrikaans: ding
  • Limburgish: dink, ding

Further reading

• “think”, in Oudnederlands Woordenboek, 2012

Old High German

Alternative forms

• ding, dink

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *þing?

Noun

thing n

1. thing, object
2. matter, case

Declension

Descendants

• Middle High German: ding
  • Cimbrian: ding
  • German: Ding
  • Luxembourgish: Déngen
  • Pennsylvania German: Ding

Old Saxon

Etymology

From Proto-West Germanic *þing. Compare Old Dutch thing, Old Frisian thing, Old English þing, Old High German ding, Old Norse þing.

Noun

thing n

1. thing, object
2. matter, case

Declension

Descendants

• Middle Low German: dink
  • German Low German: Ding
  • Plautdietsch: Dinkj

English

Etymology

From Middle English informacion, enformacion, borrowed from Anglo-Norman informacioun, enformation, Old French information, from Latin ?nf?rm?ti? (“formation, conception; education”), from the participle stem of ?nform?re (“to inform”). Compare West Frisian ynformaasje (“information”), Dutch informatie (“information”), German Information (“information”), Danish information (“information”), Swedish information (“information”), Norwegian informasjon (“information”).Morphologically inform +? -ation

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /??nf??me???n/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /??nf??me???n/
• Rhymes: -e???n

Noun

information (usually uncountable, plural informations)

1. That which resolves uncertainty; anything that answers the question of "what a given entity is".
2. Things that are or can be known about a given topic; communicable knowledge of something. [from 14th c.]

3. The act of informing or imparting knowledge; notification. [from 14th c.]

4. (law) A statement of criminal activity brought before a judge or magistrate; in the UK, used to inform a magistrate of an offence and request a warrant; in the US, an accusation brought before a judge without a grand jury indictment. [from 15th c.]
   • 1968, Carl B. Cone, The English Jacobins, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, p. 131:

     On May 21, 1792, the Attorney General filed an information against Paine charging him with seditious libel.

5. (obsolete) The act of informing against someone, passing on incriminating knowledge; accusation. [14th-17th c.]
6. (now rare) The systematic imparting of knowledge; education, training. [from 14th c.]
7. (now rare) The creation of form; the imparting of a given quality or characteristic; forming, animation. [from 17th c.]
8. (computing) […] the meaning that a human assigns to data by means of the known conventions used in its representation.
9. (Christianity) Divine inspiration. [from 15th c.]
10. A service provided by telephone which provides listed telephone numbers of a subscriber. [from 20th c.]
12. (information theory) Any unambiguous abstract data, the smallest possible unit being the bit. [from 20th c.]
13. As contrasted with data, information is processed to extract relevant data. [from late 20th c.]
14. (information technology) Any ordered sequence of symbols (or signals) (that could contain a message). [from late 20th c.]

Usage notes

• The definition of information in the computing context is from an international standard vocabulary which, though formally accepted, is largely ignored by the computing profession.[1]

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Pages starting with “information”.

Related terms

Translations

Further reading

• information on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

References

• information at OneLook Dictionary Search
• information in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
• information in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Danish

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin informati?, informati?nis.

Noun

information c (singular definite informationen, plural indefinite informationer)

1. (a piece of) information.

Inflection

Derived terms

• kontaktinformation

French

Etymology

From Old French, borrowed from Latin informati?, informati?nem.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??.f??.ma.sj??/

Noun

information f (plural informations)

1. (countable) piece of information; datum

   Cette information nous est parvenue hier soir.

2. (plural only) news

   Tous les jours, il regarde la télé le midi pour suivre les informations.

3. (uncountable) information

   Théorie de l'information.

Synonyms

• (piece of information): donnée, nouvelle
• (news): nouvelles
• (information): renseignement

Derived terms

• autoroute de l'information
• lettre d’information
• relevé d'informations
• société de l’information

Related terms

• informateur, infomatrice
• informaticien
• informatif
• informationnel
• informatique
• informatiser
• informer

Further reading

• “information” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Swedish

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin informati?, informati?nis.

Pronunciation

Noun

information c

1. information

Declension

Related terms

• info
• informant
• informationsavdelning
• informatör
• informera
• turistinformation