THORN • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Thorn

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/θɔrn/ Listen

noun

Thorn n.

A hard and sharp-pointed projection from a woody stem; usually, a branch so transformed; a spine.

(Bot.) Any shrub or small tree which bears thorns; especially, any species of the genus Crataegus, as the hawthorn, whitethorn, cockspur thorn.

Fig.: That which pricks or annoys as a thorn; anything troublesome; trouble; care. "There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me." "The guilt of empire, all its thorns and cares, Be only mine."

The name of the Anglo-Saxon letter. It was used to represent both of the sounds of English th, as in thin, then. So called because it was the initial letter of thorn, a spine.

Thorn apple (Bot.), Jamestown weed.

Thorn broom (Bot.), a shrub that produces thorns.

Thorn hedge, a hedge of thorn-bearing trees or bushes.

Thorn devil. (Zool.) See Moloch, 2.

Thorn hopper (Zool.), a tree hopper (Thelia crataegi) which lives on the thorn bush, apple tree, and allied trees.

verb

Thorn v. t. To prick, as with a thorn. (Poetic) "I am the only rose of all the stock That never thorn'd him."

See images of 'Thorn'

Etymology of 'Thorn'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Thorn" Quotes from Famous Books

... thorn alone, the rose being blasted in bud," uttered a sweet and sonorous voice with a little nasal accent, out of the myrtle-boughs that starred with bloom her hair, and swept the ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... west coast due north toward Davao. The red glory of the dying sun tinted the waters of the Gulf to the line of palm-fringed beach which edged the distant shoreline. From the shore the land sloped gently to the west and north, mile after mile of primeval jungle broken here and there where brush and thorn and creeper had yielded to man's demand for more and more hemp. Far inland the steady rise persisted, grew more abrupt and more heavily timbered, terminating in the far interior in a dim and mighty mountain whose dark-wooded slopes and misted crest dominated the Gulf: the red ...

— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... only a question of sturdy fighting and squirming one's way through the meshes of a gigantic basketwork of every variety of fantastic branch and stem and stout strangling thorn-set vine, made the denser with snaky roots—not merely twisting about one's feet, but dropping from the boughs in nooses and festoons for one's neck; air-plants too, like birds' nests, further choking up the meshes, and hanging moss, ...

— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... plucked a substantial thorn from between two strong black toes. A warm red tongue touched my restraining fingers in ...

— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... valuable of the thorn tribe, for hedge, in this country. It never suffers from those enemies that destroy so much of the hawthorn. This is also used for ...

— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

More quotes...