thornback
thornback noun: the thornback guitarfish (Platyrhinoidis triseriata), a species of ray in the north-eastern Pacific Ocean.
Noun
thornback (plural thornbacks)
- The thornback guitarfish (Platyrhinoidis triseriata), a species of ray in the north-eastern Pacific Ocean.
- The thornback ray or thornback skate (Raja clavata), a species of ray in the Atlantic Ocean.
- The thornback skate (Dentiraja lemprieri), a fish endemic to Australia.
- A woman over a certain age (variously 26 or 30) who has never married, older than a spinster.
- [A] society of honest gentlemen [is holding a lottery] for the benefit of all single ladies, widows, maids, or thornbacks […]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...
- Spinsters. — In a society where marriages were formed very early, girls often wedding at sixteen or under, […] At the age of thirty a spinster was called a "thornback ,” but bachelors and thornbacks were not the only people who […]1920, Anna Mary Galbraith, The Family and the New Democracy: A Study in Social Hygiene, page 184
Forms of thornback
| plural | thornbacks |
|---|
Origin of thornback
From Middle English thornbak; equivalent to thorn + back.
Questions about thornback
- What does thornback mean?
- Thornback means the thornback guitarfish (Platyrhinoidis triseriata), a species of ray in the north-eastern Pacific Ocean.
- What part of speech is thornback?
- Thornback is a noun.
- What is the plural of thornback?
- The plural of thornback is thornbacks.
Words near thornback in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: thornback (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “thornback.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/thornback. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.