common thread

English

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ɛd

Noun

common thread (plural common threads)

1. A recurring characteristic or theme present in different events or areas.

   Synonyms: leitmotif, throughline, golden thread, common denominator

   What is the common thread in these three stories?

   • 1996, Robert A. Stebbins, The Barbershop Singer: Inside the Social World of a Musical Hobby, University of Toronto Press, →ISBN, page 100:

     A common thread links the social world of barbershop with the neighbouring social worlds of jazz and classical music as these were sketched in the first chapter. The common thread is the general musical lifestyle shared by the musicians who […]

   • 2001, William R. Parkhurst, Cisco BGP-4 Command and Configuration Handbook, Cisco Press, →ISBN:

     My experiences in education, network consulting, service provider support, and certification have shown me that there is a common thread that frustrates people in all of these arenas. That common thread is documentation.

   • 2004, Borislav Knezevic, Figures of Finance Capitalism: Writing, Class and Capital in Mid-Victorian Narratives, Routledge, →ISBN, page 152:

     It is not difficult to see that in this preoccupation with middle-class identity, there is a common thread to all the narratives I discussed. This common thread has to do with the attempts by the Victorian writers to dramatize finance capitalism at […]

Translations

recurring characteristic or theme

• Catalan: fil roig m
• Dutch: rode draad m
• Finnish: yhteinen lanka, yhdistävä tekijä, punainen lanka
• French: fil rouge (fr) m, fil conducteur (fr) m, fil d’Ariane (fr) m
• German: roter Faden (de) m
• Italian: filo conduttore m, filo rosso m
• Polish: wspólny wątek m
• Portuguese: fio condutor m
• Russian: путево́дная нить f (putevódnaja nitʹ)
• Spanish: hilo conductor m
• Swedish: röd tråd (sv) c

Further reading

• “common thread”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.