Word.ws English Dictionary

thornbacks

thornbacks is the plural of thornback.

Meaning of thornback

Noun

thornback (plural thornbacks)

  1. The thornback guitarfish (Platyrhinoidis triseriata), a species of ray in the north-eastern Pacific Ocean.
  2. The thornback ray or thornback skate (Raja clavata), a species of ray in the Atlantic Ocean.
  3. The thornback skate (Dentiraja lemprieri), a fish endemic to Australia.
  4. (archaic) 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...

Questions about thornbacks

What is thornbacks the plural of?
Thornbacks is the plural of thornback.

Words near thornbacks in the dictionary

  1. thornapple
  2. thornapples
  3. thornasite
  4. thornasteroside
  5. thornback
  6. thornbacks
  7. Thornber
  8. Thornberry
  9. Thornberrys
  10. thornbill
  11. thornbills

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: thornbacks (page history and authors); 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: “thornbacks.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/thornbacks. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.