the thick, in the thick of it, through thick and thin, thicket of rules,, copse, zapper

New York Fashion Week is in full swing, with most of the shows going digital because of the pandemic. Vanessa Friedman, our chief fashion critic, writes that there is “angst in the air” as the world of fashion looks to the future. She discussed this with four people in the thick of it all: Tory Burch, of the namesake brand; Virgil Abloh, of Off-White and Louis Vuitton men’s wear; Gwyneth Paltrow, of Goop; and Antoine Arnault, of LVMH. Here’s an excerpt.

CNN International

In Hong Kong, CNN's correspondents have been on the ground reporting rising tensions between protesters and police:http://cnn.it/1yxo1SH

Hong Kong protests: In the thick of it

Tens of thousands of demonstrators are occupying Hong Kong's financial district in protest of what they see as Beijing's creeping influence on the way the semiautonomous region is run. CNN's correspondents have been on...

CNN.COM

• Toyota Builds Thicket of Patents Around Hybrid To Block Competitors


Potential Conflicts Abound in Government Role

Even after nine months of extraordinary government intervention, the scope and complexity of the GM rescue present a thicket of conflicts unlike any seen before in Washington.

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... definition is so fuzzy that it ought to be operationally defined! I fear such a suggestion is calculated to lead one into the thickets of Russell-type ...



A decade ago, Sen. John McCain embraced legislation to broadly deregulate the banking and insurance industries, helping to sweep aside a thicket of rules established over decades in favor of a less restricted financial marketplace that proponents said would result in greater economic growth.
(By Michael D. Shear, The Washington Post)


Craig Barrett has been leading Intel with a steady hand for almost a decade, first as CEO and now as Chairman of the Board. He has seen the tech giant through thick and thin: the thickness of wallets during the dot-com bubble, and the thinness of demand when that bubble burst.
--CNN


Through thick and thin
Meaning
Through all forms of obstacle that are put in one's way.
Origin
'Through thick and thin' is one of the English language's older expressions and one that has maintained its figurative meaning over many centuries. It is venerable enough to date from the times when England was still a predominantly wooded country, with few roads and where animals grazed on what was known as wood pasture, i.e. mixed woodland and grass. The phrase originated as 'through thicket and thin wood', which was a straightforward literal description of any determined progress through the 'thick' English countryside.
The earliest citation I can find that uses our contemporary wording is in Richard Baxter's religious text A Saint Or a Brute: The Certain Necessity and Excellency of Holiness, 1662:

"Men do fancy a necessity [of holiness] where there is none, yet that will carry them through thick and thin."

The phrase had been in use in Old and Middle English, in the literal 'thicket or thin wood' sense, for some centuries before that. The earliest known usage is in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Reeve's Tale:

And whan the hors was laus, he gynneth gon
Toward the fen, ther wilde mares renne,
And forth with "wehee," thurgh thikke and thurgh thenne.
[And when the horse was loose, he begins to go
Toward the fen, where wild mares run
And forth with "wehee," through thick and through thin]

foal, mare, stallion, harem


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the thick

NOUN

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The most active or crowded part of something:we were in the thick of the battle

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deeply involved in a particular activity or situation. A fight broke out in the bar and he suddenly found himself in the thick of it.

In the thick of it definition and meaning | Collins English ...

thick (CLOSE TOGETHER) 
adjective
1 growing close together and in large amounts:
thick forest
thick dark hair

2 difficult to see through:
Thick, black smoke was pouring out of the chimney.

thicken
rb [I or T]
to (cause to) become thicker:
The smoke thickened rapidly.

thicket 
noun [C]
an area of trees and bushes growing closely together

n.

1. A dense growth of shrubs or underbrush; a copse.
2. Something suggestive of a dense growth of plants, as in impenetrability or thickness: “the thicket of unreality which stands between us and the facts of life” (Daniel J. Boorstin).

[Old English thiccet, from thicce, thick. See thick.]

thick・et

━━ n. 茂み, やぶ.

Behind a copse of dark green conifers, bees buzz lazily over neat rows of shiny tea bushes soaking up the summer sun. A list of rules pinned to a board instructs tea-pickers not to keep long fingernails or to powder their faces; smoking is banned. Instead of pesticides, bug-zappers protect the crop from leafhoppers and other tea-loving pests.
在一片墨绿色的针叶林背后，一排排整齐的茶树丛闪闪发亮，沐浴在夏日的阳光下，蜜蜂嗡嗡作响，懒洋洋地在枝头盘绕。一块板子上写着一系列规定，要求采茶者 不得蓄长指甲，不得在脸上搽粉；严禁吸烟。这里不使用杀虫剂，而是电子灭虫器来保护茶树免受叶蝉及其它嗜茶叶害虫的侵害。

zapper
n. Slang

1. A destructive device, especially ne that destroys by means of electric current or radiation: a bug zapper.
2. A remote-control device for switching a television set on and off and for changing channels.