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thrust

nounverbcommon in dialogue

  • //θɹʌst//
  • //θɹʊst//

An attack made by moving the sword parallel to its length and landing with the point.

noun

  1. 1

    An attack made by moving the sword parallel to its length and landing with the point.

    Pierre was a master swordsman, and could parry the thrusts of lesser men with barely a thought.

  2. 2

    A push, stab, or lunge forward.

    The cutpurse tried to knock her satchel from her hands, but she avoided his thrust and yelled, "Thief!"

    Tilehurst […] began to pedal unhurryingly towards the anticipated lane, with the easy thrust of a man who has just made a substantial meal and knows that he has plenty of time and to spare for his appointment.

  3. 3

    The force generated by propulsion, as in a jet engine.

    Spacecraft are engineering marvels, designed to resist the thrust of liftoff, as well as the reverse pressure of the void.

    the pectoral fins are capable of generating high thrust during flutter

  4. 4

    figurativeThe primary effort; the goal.

    Ostensibly, the class was about public health in general, but the main thrust was really sex education.

    “The main thrust of it was that Britain is losing out, that Brexit it not delivering, our economy is in a weak position,” said the source.

    As is normal for biopics, the movie takes liberties with the historical record, but the thrust of the narrative is not disputed.

Etymology

From Middle English þrusten, from Old Norse þrysta, from Proto-Germanic *þrustijaną, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *trewd-.

verb

  1. 1

    To make advance with force.

    We thrust at the enemy with our forces.

  2. 2

    To force something upon someone.

    I asked her not to thrust the responsibility on me.

  3. 3

    To push out or extend rapidly or powerfully.

    He thrust his arm into the icy stream and grabbed a wriggling fish, astounding the observers.

    Towers thrusting skyward.

    Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with […] on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust from which gnarled and rusty stalks thrust themselves up like withered elfin limbs.

  4. 4

    To push or drive with force; to shove.

    to thrust anything with the hand or foot, or with an instrument

    Into a Dungeon thruſt, to work with Slaves?

  5. 5

    To enter by pushing; to squeeze in.

    And thrust between my father and the god.

  6. 6

    To stab; to pierce; usually with through.

Forms

plural
thrusts
past tense
thrusted
past participle
thrusted
present participle
thrusting
third person singular
thrusts
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).