A thread is an execution path; it's purely concerned with executing a given function. That function is its life and scope; once it returns from that function, it's dead. In user space, a thread is an execution path within a process; processes can be single or multi-threaded. Kernel threads are very similar to user mode threads in many respects. In kernel space, a thread is also an execution path, except that it runs within the kernel VAS, with kernel privilege. This means that kernels are also multi-threaded. A quick look at the output of ps(1) (run with the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) style aux option switches) shows us the kernel threads – they're the ones whose names are enclosed in square brackets:
$ ps aux
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 1 0.0 0.5 167464 11548 ? Ss 06:20 0:00 /sbin/init splash 3
root 2 0.0 0.0 0...
