"thornback" meaning in English

See thornback in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: thornbacks [plural]
Etymology: From Middle English thornbak; equivalent to thorn + back. Etymology templates: {{inh|en|enm|thornbak}} Middle English thornbak, {{compound|en|thorn|back}} thorn + back Head templates: {{en-noun}} thornback (plural thornbacks)
  1. Any animal with a thorny back, especially marine animals, such as:
    The thornback guitarfish (Platyrhinoidis triseriata), a species of ray in the north-eastern Pacific Ocean.
    Sense id: en-thornback-en-noun-vfhfj1Sm Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 28 32 21 18 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 35 25 19 22 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 34 30 19 17
  2. Any animal with a thorny back, especially marine animals, such as:
    The thornback ray or thornback skate (Raja clavata), a species of ray in the Atlantic Ocean.
    Sense id: en-thornback-en-noun-KUdu7vCt Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 28 32 21 18 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 34 30 19 17
  3. Any animal with a thorny back, especially marine animals, such as:
    The thornback skate (Dentiraja lemprieri), a fish endemic to Australia.
    Categories (lifeform): Rays and skates
    Sense id: en-thornback-en-noun-ZhviJ8Jy Disambiguation of Rays and skates: 24 25 42 9 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 28 32 21 18 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 34 30 19 17
  4. (archaic) A woman over a certain age (variously 26 or 30) who has never married, older than a spinster. Tags: archaic
    Sense id: en-thornback-en-noun-h073xi-V Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 28 32 21 18 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 34 30 19 17

Inflected forms

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          "ref": "1710, Isaac Bickerstaff (pseudonym), A Good husband for five shillings, or Esquire Bickerstaff's Lottery, quoted in 2016, Amy M. Froide, Silent Partners: Women As Public Investors During Britain's Financial Revolution, 1690-1750, Oxford University Press, page 46",
          "text": "[A] society of honest gentlemen [is holding a lottery] for the benefit of all single ladies, widows, maids, or thornbacks […]"
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          "ref": "1920, Anna Mary Galbraith, The Family and the New Democracy: A Study in Social Hygiene, page 184:",
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          "text": "\"And I'll be a thornback spinster! Oh, I'd rather die of the pox than that!\" She bolted away to spill her bitter tears out of doors in a place where no one could observe her. Her bold adventure had suddenly turned against her.",
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}

Download raw JSONL data for thornback meaning in English (3.4kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.