thorny

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English thorni,^[2][3] inherited from Old English þornig (“thorny, full of thorns”),^[4][5][3][6] formed from Old English þorn + -ig.^[4][6][7] Comparable formations are Old High German dornig, Middle High German dornic, German dornig and Dutch doornig.^[5][4][3] Thorn is from Proto-Germanic *þurnaz,^[1] also the source of Gothic 𐌸𐌰𐌿𐍂𐌽𐌿𐍃 (þaurnus) and Old Norse þorn,^[1][3] and Watkins traces it to Proto-Indo-European *tr̥nós, the source of Old Church Slavonic трънъ (trŭnŭ, “thorn”).^[1][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Full of thorns: in Old English, in a homily of Wulfstan that bids the reader hedge his ears with a thorny hedge, and in Ælfric's homilies, of a field that is not thorny.^[5][4] Merriam-Webster dates the word to before the 12th century,^[6] and Dictionary.com to before 1000.^[7]

Semantic evolution

Already in Old English the word was used both of plants with thorns and of ground overgrown with thorny plants.^[4] In Middle English it also described things that were sharp-pointed or thorn-shaped, and it was used figuratively;^[2] the Ancrene Riwle speaks of an anchoress's nest as soft outside and thorny within.^[2] From before 1340, in Richard Rolle's Psalter, thorny meant painful or vexing to the mind,^[4][3] and since 1653 it has described a question full of points of contention, hard to handle or delicate, the sense of a thorny problem today.^[4][8] Johnson (1755) defined it first as "full of thorns; spiny; rough; prickly".^[9] From 1711 it was also used of animals with thorn-like spines,^[4] and in Scottish and northern English dialect thorny-back was the stickleback and the thornback ray; in Gloucestershire and Somerset thorny alone meant the stickleback.^[10] Etymonline notes that the figurative image is widespread: a nickname for a quibbler in Greek meant "thorn-gatherer".^[3]

Timeline

• Old English – full of thorns; overgrown with thorny plants.^[4][5]
• before 1340 – figurative, painful or vexing to the mind.^[4]
• 1653 – full of points of contention; hard to handle, delicate.^[4]
• 1711 – of an animal, having thorn-like spines.^[4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Having many thorns or spines; prickly: a thorny hedge.^[11][8][6]
2. Covered with thorny plants or brambles: thorny scrubland.^[11][12][6]
3. Full of difficulties or points of controversy; hard to deal with: a thorny question of inheritance.^{[11][8][12][6]}
4. Causing pain or distress; sharp or vexing.^[6][4][8]

Word family

• thornily
• thorniness
• unthorny

Related words

• thorn
• hawthorn

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
6. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
9. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
11. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
12. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press