Thornback
Definition, Meaning & Examples
Part of speech noun
Quick meaning: Thornback is a noun meaning Any animal with a thorny back, especially marine animals, such as:.
Meaning
Any animal with a thorny back, especially marine animals, such as:.
More Meanings
- (archaic) A woman over a certain age (variously 26 or 30) who has never married, older than a spinster.
Example Sentences
[A] society of honest gentlemen [is holding a lottery] for the benefit of all single ladies, widows, maids, or thornbacks […]
"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.
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 […]
Word Forms
- thornbacks
Related Words
Related dictionary entries include trunkback, thornhog, turtleback, turtle-back, thunnid, leatherback.
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Sources & Attribution
FreeDictionaryAPI.com / Wiktionary · Original source · CC BY-SA 4.0
Dictionary data is provided by FreeDictionaryAPI.com and sourced from Wiktionary under its stated license.