strand vs thread

strand

noun
  • Each of the strings which, twisted together, make up a yarn, rope or cord. 

  • A group of wires, usually twisted or braided. 

  • The shore or beach of the sea or ocean; shore; beach. 

  • A small brook or rivulet. 

  • A passage for water; gutter. 

  • A nucleotide chain. 

  • A string. 

  • A series of programmes on a particular theme or linked subject. 

  • An element in a composite whole; a sequence of linked events or facts; a logical thread. 

  • A street. 

  • An individual length of any fine, string-like substance. 

verb
  • To leave (someone) in a difficult situation; to abandon or desert. 

  • To form by uniting strands. 

  • To break a strand of (a rope). 

  • To run aground; to beach. 

  • To cause the third out of an inning to be made, leaving a runner on base. 

thread

noun
  • A long, thin and flexible form of material, generally with a round cross-section, used in sewing, weaving or in the construction of string. 

  • A sequence of connections. 

  • A filament, as of a flower, or of any fibrous substance, as of bark. 

  • A screw thread. 

  • A unit of execution, lighter in weight than a process, usually sharing memory and other resources with other threads executing concurrently. 

  • The line midway between the banks of a stream. 

  • A continued theme or idea. 

  • A series of messages, generally grouped by subject, in which all messages except the first are replies to previous messages in the thread. 

  • Composition; quality; fineness. 

verb
  • To put thread through. 

  • To remove the hair using a thread. 

  • To pass (through a narrow constriction or around a series of obstacles). 

  • To screw on; to fit the threads of a nut on a bolt. 

How often have the words strand and thread occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )