Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Having many thorns or abounding in thorn-covered vegetation.
- adjective Spiny or prickly.
- adjective Controversial, problematic, or vexatious.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Abounding in or covered with thorns; producing thorns; prickly; spiny.
- Characteristic of or resembling a thorn; sharp; irritating; painful.
- In zoology, spinous; prickly; echinate.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Full of thorns or spines; rough with thorns; spiny.
- adjective Like a thorn or thorns; hence, figuratively, troublesome; vexatious; harassing; perplexing.
- adjective (Bot.) rest-harrow.
- adjective a prickly plant of the genus Fagonia (
Fagonia Cretica , etc.).
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective having
thorns orspines - adjective
troublesome orvexatious
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective bristling with perplexities
- adjective having or covered with protective barbs or quills or spines or thorns or setae etc.
Etymologies
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Examples
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Far more thorny is the question of whether casual sex, or any sex outside marriage, is emotionally harmful.
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"Far more thorny is the question of whether casual sex, or any sex outside marriage, is emotionally harmful."
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Far more thorny is the question of whether casual sex, or any sex outside marriage, is emotionally harmful.
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Especially interesting will be how Biden may be willing to take on a certain thorny issue, spoken in low whispers now.
Blogtalk: The Biden Factor - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com 2008
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Then there are animals that get tangled up in thorny or spiky vegetation.
Archive 2006-05-01 Darren Naish 2006
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Up close the island turned out to be covered in thorny scrub and seagulls’ nests.
Going Coastal 2006
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Up close the island turned out to be covered in thorny scrub and seagulls’ nests.
Going Coastal 2006
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There is no situation, however thorny, which is not saved by politeness.
The Ancient Regime Hippolyte Taine 1860
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Mr Obama's remarks on trade referred to the thorny issue of China's undervalued currency, with the perceived unfairness of China's trade policies the subject of increasingly strident election campaign rhetoric.
Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph Peter Foster 2012
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I've sucked down a filthy and delicious* one at a teriyaki joint in Hollywood, and I've loved the cheeseburger hiding between the carnitas and pibil at my local (and truly excellent) reader had found a rose among what one could fairly describe as the thorny situation of a Korean-California fusion lounge, my burger senses started tingling.
A Hamburger Today 2009
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