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say it: THAWR-nee
thorny is an adjective meaning "bristling with perplexities". It carries 2 recorded senses.
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”
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.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for thorny come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.