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Thorny   /θˈɔrni/   Listen
adjective
Thorny  adj.  (compar. thornier; superl. thorniest)  
1.
Full of thorns or spines; rough with thorns; spiny; as, a thorny wood; a thorny tree; a thorny crown.
2.
Like a thorn or thorns; hence, figuratively, troublesome; vexatious; harassing; perplexing. "The thorny point of bare distress." "The steep and thorny way to heaven."
Thorny rest-harrow (Bot.), rest-harrow.
Thorny trefoil, a prickly plant of the genus Fagonia (Fagonia Cretica, etc.).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Thorny" Quotes from Famous Books



... weakest, the weariest, the faintest—claims His attention. His loving eye follows me day by day out to the wilderness—marks out my pasture, studies my wants, and trials, and sorrows, and perplexities—every steep ascent, every brook, every winding path, every thorny thicket. "He goeth before them." It is not rough driving, but gentle guiding. He does not take them over an unknown road; He himself has trodden it before. He hath drunk of every "brook by the way;" He himself hath "suffered being tempted;" ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... he trims his hedge, whose riotous tangle threatens to encroach upon the road, cuts the trailing stems of the bramble a foot or two from the ground and leaves the root-stock, which soon dries up. These bramble-stumps, sheltered and protected by the thorny brushwood, are in great demand among a host of Hymenoptera who have families to settle. The stump, when dry, offers to any one that knows how to use it a hygienic dwelling, where there is no fear of damp from the sap; its ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... civil power refused its endorsement, it was universally adhered to. What was bad law was notoriously good policy, for a disaffected mayor, or an unfriendly Justice of the Peace, had it in his power to make the path of the impress officer a thorny one indeed. "Make unto yourselves friends," was therefore one of the first injunctions laid upon officers whose duties unavoidably made ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... life[du] Of Veniero—shall I save it twice? Would that I could save them and Venice also! All these men, or their fathers, were my friends Till they became my subjects; then fell from me As faithless leaves drop from the o'erblown flower, And left me a lone blighted thorny stalk, 310 Which, in its solitude, can shelter nothing; So, as they let me wither, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... much of the travail that one is fain to call one's own education. We who have wandered in the wastes so long, and lost so much of our lives in our wandering, may at least offer warnings to younger wayfarers, as men who in thorny paths have borne the heat and burden of the day might give a clue to their journey to those who have yet a morning and a noon. As I look back and think of those cataracts of printed stuff which honest compositors set up, meaning, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)


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