The thread of execution (thread of control, logical thread) refers to the logical path of execution taken by the program, so it's broadly synonymous with control flow. There is also a more specific abstraction of the blocking thread or a sequence of operations with a call stack.

The blocking thread or threaded state is a core abstraction of imperative programming and is used in every mainstream imperative or mixed-paradigm language, and it's also recreated in functional languages as monadic composition of computations.

In a low-level or "close to metal" language like C, the blocking thread offers the advantage of relatively close correspondence between the computational and machine models (specifically, between hardware instructions and thread steps), simplifying compilation and enabling flexible use of the machine.

At a higher level, the sequential chaining of steps or effects or the concept of "doing one thing after another" is relatively simple for humans to compose and reason about. Functional-only languages like Haskell and Idris even feature syntactic extensions (do notation) that allow sequencing operations in a threaded-state style.