"A thread in computer science is short for a thread of execution. Threads are a way for a program to split itself into two or more simultaneously running tasks. (The name "thread" is by analogy with the way that a number of threads are interwoven to make a piece of fabric). Multiple threads can be executed in parallel on many computer systems. This multithreading generally occurs by time slicing (where a single processor switches between different threads) or by multiprocessing (where threads are executed on separate processors). Threads are similar to processes, but differ in the way that they share resources." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_%28computer_science%29