Transliteration: thos pa
I. <verb> v.i. ཐོས་པ་/ ཐོས་པ་/ ཐོས་པ་//. "To hear" i.e., to hear with the ears but having the meaning that one hears and གོ་བ་ knows. E.g., [TC] གློ་བུར་འབྲུག་སྒྲ་ཐོས་ནས་ཞེད་སྣང་དབང་མེད་དུ་སྐྱེས། "hearing the sudden sound of thunder, fear came without choice"; ཐན་བརྡ་ཐོས་ཏེ་སེམས་མི་དགའ་བ། "hearing an inauspicious sound, mind was unhappy"; རྒྱལ་ཞེས་ཐོས་ཀྱང་མ་ཁེངས། ཕམ་ཞེས་ཐོས་ཀྱང་མ་ཞུམ། "even though you hear "victory" don't get a big head; even though you hear "defeat" don't shrink away"; བསླབ་བྱ་མང་དུ་ཐོས་པས་མཁས་པར་གྱུར། "he became learned due to hearing many instructions".II. <noun> "Hearing", meaning that which one hears as the initial part of the learning process. E.g., as in ཐོས་པ་བསམ་པ་སྒོམ་པ་གསུམ་ "the three—hearing, contemplating, meditating" which are regarded as the three necessary stages of following any path of study if one wants to fully realize what is being taught (see ཐོས་བསམ་སྒོམ་གསུམ་ for more).
As with the verb, hearing here implies understanding, too. For that reason, ཐོས་པ་ as a noun actually means things that have been listened to and understood. So for example, in the phrase ཐོས་པ་རྒྱ་ཆེ་བ། which is used as a way of expressing the good qualities of a person, it lit. means "someone of vast hearing" but actually means "someone who has sat at the feet of many teachers and who has heard / taken in a vast amount of information; someone who is rich with heard information". For these reasons the phrase ཐོས་པ་བསམ་པ་སྒོམ་པ་གསུམ་ was often translated as "the three—study, contemplating, meditating" but that habit seems to be passing now since "study" is too much for ཐོས་པ་.