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What is "thorny"

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thorny
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
thorny
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a thorny issue (also a vexed issueformal) (= a difficult one that causes disagreement)
▪ Illegal immigration is always a thorny issue.
a thorny/knotty problem (=difficult)
▪ He still faced the thorny problem of finding a way out of the jungle.
a vexed/thorny question (=one that is hard to deal with)
▪ Finally, there’s the thorny question of money.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
issue
▪ But the thorny issues that divided the main trading powers at Seattle appear to be largely unresolved.
▪ Melding the top managements also would be a thorny issue.
▪ The other thorny issue to be addressed is that of course funding.
▪ What you can do Handling naughtiness is one of the thornier issues that parents have to face.
▪ But once again the thorny issue of bolts in West Penwith is raised.
▪ The thorny issue is rather cutting the workforce-not an easy task for a leftwing party.
▪ Compensation and betterment proved thorny issues and were not totally resolved until 1948, and then only temporarily.
▪ Unlike many top executives, he doesn't believe in committing thorny issues to paper.
problem
▪ None of these struck me as particularly penetrating answers to a thorny problem.
▪ The ongoing success of his department validated his approach to the thorny problem of appraising individual effectiveness.
▪ The third text, c, offers more thorny problems.
▪ With the emergence of a global community, however, thorny problems appear.
▪ It was left to us alcoholics to sort out the thorny problem.
▪ Intellectualproperty issues are another thorny problem.
▪ Witchcraft thus disposes of the thorny problem of the existence of evil.
question
▪ The three still have to sort out the thorny question of who will run the centre and where it will be.
▪ Chapter 5 focuses particularly on the thorny question of idealism.
▪ These are not tremendously forceful answers to the thorny questions posed.
▪ Moreover, the thorny question of additionality will have to be solved.
▪ This was the thorny question of what would happen eventually to the reactor's residue of radioactive waste.
▪ Which just leaves us with the thorny question of prices.
▪ This is the really thorny question, but only relatively recently has it begun to receive the attention it merits.
▪ Finally, there's that thorny question of price.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Before me lay a deep gulley choked with oleanders and thorny scrub, which descended precipitously down to the private beach.
▪ He may touch on several thorny border issues, such as immigration, sewage management and economic development.
▪ It is here that some of the thorniest decisions arise about choice and independence.
▪ None of these struck me as particularly penetrating answers to a thorny problem.
▪ Scritch, scratch, scramble, through the thorny bushes!
▪ The ongoing success of his department validated his approach to the thorny problem of appraising individual effectiveness.
▪ The three still have to sort out the thorny question of who will run the centre and where it will be.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Thorny

Thorny \Thorn"y\, a. [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.''
    --Shak.

    The steep and thorny way to heaven.
    --Shak.

    Thorny rest-harrow (Bot.), rest-harrow.

    Thorny trefoil, a prickly plant of the genus Fagonia ( Fagonia Cretica, etc.).

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
thorny

Old English þornig; see thorn + -y (2). Figurative sense is attested from mid-14c. Related: Thorniness. Similar formation in Dutch doornig, German dornig.

Wiktionary
thorny

a. 1 having thorns or spines 2 troublesome or vexatious 3 aloof and irritable

Related phrases:
WordNet
thorny

  1. adj. bristling with perplexities; "the thorny question of states' rights"

  2. having or covered with protective barbs or quills or spines or thorns or setae etc.; "a horse with a short bristly mane"; "bristly shrubs"; "burred fruits"; "setaceous whiskers" [syn: barbed, barbellate, briary, briery, bristled, bristly, burred, burry, prickly, setose, setaceous, spiny]

  3. [also: thorniest, thornier]

Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Related phrases:

Usage examples of "thorny".

Thornier sucked in a slow breath between his teeth, stared angrily at his employer for a moment, and seemed briefly ready to unleash an angry blast.

He held up a shredded ribbon of tape for Thorny to see, then flung it angrily across the booth.

A quarter of a mile south of the settlement, in the midst of the forest, an old pandanus tree spread its thorny leaves to the sun.

Peering down through a tangle of thorny pandanus, Minarii gave a sudden low exclamation.

Both men were bleeding from a score of deep scratches, for they were fighting in the thorny pandanus scrub on the very brink of the cliff.

Their lives are interconnected like thorny vines forever circling and recircling the same tree.

The path of the borrower is a thorny one, especially if, like Spennie, his reputation as a payer-back is not of the best.

The Tranny Man burrows under his pillow cursing the night, the dogs, the town, his crazy wife who had suggested in the first place coming to this thorny wilderness, goddamn her!

With the Upper Mutar running over its banks in the Thorny Hell because of the unseasonal weather, there was no dry land at all in the village of Dezaras.

Sweet gum and persimmon and water locust, ironwood and redbud and a dozen other species with buttonbush and thorny dewberry and greenbriar skirting their bases.

For the moment, though, the tangled underbrush along the Chequy Water was still thick with thorny vines, nettles, and tangles of briarwhite and young willow.

To her right was a vast tangle of dreary tamarack and cedar interspersed with deadwood, bracken, and thorny shrubs.

Piet Ricimer knelt and teased a thorny plant loose from the margin of the grainfield surrounding the Fed settlement.

Ricimer knelt and teased a thorny plant loose from the margin of the grainfield surrounding the Fed settlement.

Most of Fo was a vast, fiat waste of rock and scree, with little vegetation but the hardiest, thorny scrubs.