不要将线程安全性与决定论混淆。线程安全代码也可以是非确定性的。考虑到使用线程代码调试问题的难度，这可能是正常的情况。: -)

线程安全只是确保当一个线程修改或读取共享数据时，没有其他线程可以以改变数据的方式访问它。如果代码依赖于特定的执行顺序来确保正确性，那么除了线程安全所需的同步机制之外，还需要其他同步机制来确保这一点。

我喜欢Brian Goetz的Java并发实践中的定义，因为它的全面性

如果一个类在从多个线程访问时行为正确，那么它就是线程安全的，而不管运行时环境对这些线程的执行是如何调度或交错的，并且在调用代码方面没有额外的同步或其他协调。

用最简单的话来说:P 如果在一个代码块上执行多个线程是安全的，那么它就是线程安全的*

*适用条件

条件被其他的答案提到，比如 1. 如果你执行一个线程或多个线程，结果应该是相同的。

线程安全代码按照指定的方式工作，即使由不同的线程同时输入。这通常意味着，应该不间断地运行的内部数据结构或操作受到保护，不会同时进行不同的修改。

与其认为代码或类是线程安全的，我认为将操作视为线程安全的更有帮助。如果两个操作在从任意线程上下文运行时按照指定的方式运行，那么它们就是线程安全的。在许多情况下，类将以线程安全的方式支持一些操作组合，而其他则不支持。

例如，许多像数组列表和散列集这样的集合可以保证，如果它们最初只由一个线程访问，并且在引用对任何其他线程可见后永远不会被修改，那么它们可以被任何线程组合以任意方式读取而不受干扰。

More interestingly, some hash-set collections such as the original non-generic one in .NET, may offer a guarantee that as long as no item is ever removed, and provided that only one thread ever writes to them, any thread that tries to read the collection will behave as though accessing a collection where updates might be delayed and occur in arbitrary order, but which will otherwise behave normally. If thread #1 adds X and then Y, and thread #2 looks for and sees Y and then X, it would be possible for thread #2 to see that Y exists but X doesn't; whether or not such behavior is "thread-safe" would depend upon whether thread #2 is prepared to deal with that possibility.

As a final note, some classes--especially blocking communications libraries--may have a "close" or "Dispose" method which is thread-safe with respect to all other methods, but no other methods that are thread-safe with respect to each other. If a thread performs a blocking read request and a user of the program clicks "cancel", there would be no way for a close request to be issued by the thread that's attempting to perform the read. The close/dispose request, however, may asynchronously set a flag which will cause the read request to be canceled as soon as possible. Once close is performed on any thread, the object would become useless, and all attempts at future actions would fail immediately, but being able to asynchronously terminate any attempted I/O operations is better than require that the close request be synchronized with the read (since if the read blocks forever, the synchronization request would be likewise blocked).

一个更容易理解的方法是，是什么使代码不是线程安全的。有两个主要问题会使线程应用程序产生不需要的行为。

Accessing shared variable without locking This variable could be modified by another thread while executing the function. You want to prevent it with a locking mechanism to be sure of the behavior of your function. General rule of thumb is to keep the lock for the shortest time possible. Deadlock caused by mutual dependency on shared variable If you have two shared variable A and B. In one function, you lock A first then later you lock B. In another function, you start locking B and after a while, you lock A. This is a potential deadlock where first function will wait for B to be unlocked when second function will wait for A to be unlocked. This issue will probably not occur in your development environment and only from time to time. To avoid it, all locks must always be in the same order.