spinous

1. 1.

   having spines

   “the dorsal fin is spinous”

   Synonymsspiny

   Antonymsspineless
2. 2.

   shaped like a spine or thorn

   Synonymsacanthoidacanthous

   Similarpointed

Other forms of spinous

comparative

spinouser·

superlative

spinousest·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about spinous

What does spinous mean?

spinous means "having spines". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in spinous?

spinous has 2 syllables: spi-nous. The stress falls on "spi".

What is another word for spinous?

Close synonyms include spiny, acanthoid, acanthous. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

What is the opposite of spinous?

The recorded antonyms are spineless.

Is spinous a common word?

spinous is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.