Adjective, : a thorny predicament. ,a thorny question. From Dictionary.com.
There can be some differences in thorniness within a variety. From Wordnik.com. [28 additional technical notes about tropical agriculture] Reference
Perhaps it is the Grand Guignol of the plot; perhaps it is the thorniness of the language. From Wordnik.com. [The Duchess of Malfi] Reference
The shibboleth that music to be serious required public disdain mistook thorniness for quality. From Wordnik.com. [The 'Mash of Myriad Sounds'] Reference
The rose is the most prominent image in the human brain, as to delicacy, beauty, short-livedness, thorniness. From Wordnik.com. [Thematic Essay: The Rose] Reference
Cunning little thing, for all her thorniness and her sharpness with him, which he now saw that he had deserved. From Wordnik.com. [Murder at Bridge] Reference
For my part, the thorniness of the term "experimental" comes when it's used in an attempt to define a class of novels or novelists. From Wordnik.com. [“Experimental writing”] Reference
Did Miss Burridge grow roses because they had so many traits in common with her adolescent pupils -- softness, dewiness, sweetness, occasional thorniness?. From Wordnik.com. [Incubus]
Cultivars vary in crown and stem form, growth rate, growth habit (upright vs. prostrate), leaf shape, thorniness, flowering characteristics, and phenology. From Wordnik.com. [Chapter 10] Reference
Characteristics such as size, pulp color and flavor, peel thickness and thorniness are taken into consideration, whether cultivation takes place in the wild or elsewhere. From Wordnik.com. [Culinary travel in the Mixteca Poblana: The avocado route] Reference
Their adaptive mechanisms include deep root systems that penetrate to subsoil moisture or wide-spreading root systems to gather spare moisture, with some species having both root types; adaptation to the high salinity often found in arid areas; small leaf blades or needle-like leaves to reduce transpiration during drought or other physiological mechanisms to conserve moisture by slowing evaporation through the leaves; and unpalatability or thorniness that discourages grazing animals. From Wordnik.com. [Chapter 7] Reference
The most characteristic feature of the jungle was its thorniness. From Wordnik.com. [The Malay Archipelago, the land of the orang-utan and the bird of paradise; a narrative of travel, with studies of man and nature — Volume 1] Reference
It was a rank wild growth, with many green leaves on it still, and made an impression of thorniness. From Wordnik.com. [Excursions] Reference
The back and forth between Congress and Perdue illustrates the thorniness and complexity of the legal dispute. From Wordnik.com. [ajc.com - News] Reference
Meanwhile her own position was certainly very difficult, and she acknowledged its thorniness with a little sigh. From Wordnik.com. [Comedies of Courtship] Reference
Looking over the puzzle, I'm a bit surprised at how quickly I sailed thourhg it, because there is potential thorniness all over. From Wordnik.com. [Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle] Reference
Theme answers then lend themselves to preposterous cluing of the sort that adds much-needed thorniness to the typical Sunday solve. From Wordnik.com. [Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle] Reference
But since then, the show has unfolded with maddening thorniness and logic so circular that it gets in the way of suspended disbelief. From Wordnik.com. [Boston.com Top Stories] Reference
Despite grayness and thorniness, however, you saw that they were in the summer of their life-bloom; and singularly above even their beauty of blooming they held what is rare in the eyes of either men or women -- they held a look of being just. From Wordnik.com. [Bride of the Mistletoe] Reference
The kinder he was, the more she yielded, almost eagerly at times, as though the thorniness of her own speech had hurt herself most, and there were behind it all a sad life, and a sad heart that only asked in truth for a little sympathy and understanding. From Wordnik.com. [Lady Rose's Daughter] Reference
The importance of the West Lothian question depends on factors that surround it; as I have suggested, the constitutional requirement for Spanish deputies to govern in the interest of the country as a whole might remove a lot of the thorniness from the matter here. From Wordnik.com. [Ephems of BLB] Reference
Now between these two states of equally natural growth, the point of difference that forced itself on me (and practically enough, in the work I had in my own wood), was not so much the withering and waste of the one, and the life of the other, as the thorniness and cruelty of the one, and the softness of the other. From Wordnik.com. [Proserpina, Volume 1 Studies Of Wayside Flowers] Reference
Indeed, he says that "the rose is the most prominent image in the human brain, as to delicacy, beauty, short-livedness, thorniness. From Wordnik.com. [Larbear's Aoxomoxoa Thesis] Reference
It is this mutilation, observe, which is the very sign manual of the plague; joined, in the artistic forms of it, with a love of thorniness -- (in their mystic root, the truncation of the limbless serpent and the spines of the dragon's wing. From Wordnik.com. [The Crown of Wild Olive also Munera Pulveris; Pre-Raphaelitism; Aratra Pentelici; The Ethics of the Dust; Fiction, Fair and Foul; The Elements of Drawing] Reference
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