“through thick and thin” means to support or be loyal to someone or something, even when things are difficult. It is often used to describe a strong friendship or relationship. It means, at any cost, no matter what happens, however difficult or seemingly impossible, to support, no matter how difficult it may turn out to be.
Origin of ‘through thick and thin’
This dates back to a time when the English countryside was difficult to navigate, being made up of dense woods as well as stretches of wasteland. To make progress one would have to be prepared to travel through both potentially hostile conditions. The phrase “through thick and thin” became used to describe someone who was willing to stick by their friends and family in matters other than navigating the terrain, no matter what. It was a reminder that even in the most difficult times, there is always hope, just like, in the literal sense, one could make it through the landscape with friends dedicated to helping one.
The first time the phrase appears it is a literal description of the need to negotiate that terrain. It is in Chaucer’s fourteenth-century Reeve’s Tale in The Canterbury Tales:
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.
The Elizabethan poet, Edmund Spenser, used it in The Faerie Queene, 1590.
“His tyreling Jade he fiersly forth did push. Through thicke and thin, both over banck and bushe.”
