How to Use thorny in a Sentence

thorny

adjective

• Leave it to the mouths of babes to solve the thorny issues.
  — WSJ, 27 Nov. 2022
• The issue was among the thorniest in the peace process, which ground to a halt in 2009.
  — Joseph Krauss, Julia Frankel, TIME, 29 Oct. 2024
• The gloves are best for pruning hedges and working with thorny plants.
  — Renee Freemon Mulvihill, Better Homes & Gardens, 13 Apr. 2023
• For now, the thorny problem is there just aren’t enough humans who want to do the work.
  — Lee Powell, Washington Post, 20 Sep. 2022
• The Utah farm's ground is rough and covered with thorny brush, Cooley said.
  — Michael Ruiz, Fox News, 15 June 2022
• The leaves were massed between and behind thorny rose shrubs along the borders.
  — Ian McEwan, The New Yorker, 1 Aug. 2022
• The issue of how to handle donations to the protests is perhaps the most thorny.
  — Richard Vanderford, WSJ, 18 Feb. 2022
• Tara flour is one of two products made from the seed pods of a thorny shrub native to Peru.
  — Sandee Lamotte, CNN, 3 Oct. 2024
• The debate around boosters boils down to a few thorny questions.
  — San Diego Union-Tribune, 22 Sep. 2021
• Those are thorny issues that Garland will need to weigh.
  — Doyle McManuswashington Columnist, Los Angeles Times, 26 June 2022
• Braun says it’s time to reckon with these thorny questions.
  — Grace Browne, Wired, 15 Feb. 2022
• My mom’s thorny shrug to my question told me there was no use asking why.
  — Hazlitt, 14 Aug. 2024
• If just stems that sprout from below the soil are thorny, these are growing from the root stock and should be cut back to the soil surface.
  — Melinda Myers, Journal Sentinel, 22 Mar. 2024
• Rupp has another angle that might prove thorny for the city.
  — San Diego Union-Tribune, 9 Jan. 2022
• If a truck needs to be pulled aside to address some thorny issue, there's a bay for that and time built into the schedule.
  — Ezra Dyer, Car and Driver, 4 Feb. 2022
• Such is the case with the thorny issue of what to do with the millions of gas cars that the rich world will discard as its fleets are electrified.
  — David Zipper, Vox, 3 Sep. 2024
• One of the thorniest problems researchers sought to address was the link between thought and language.
  — Sonia Shah, New York Times, 20 Sep. 2023
• Still, the aspirational talk couldn’t paper over the thorny stuff.
  — Michael Schulman, The New Yorker, 27 Sep. 2021
• Approval of the short-term spending bill is one of four thorny problems facing Congress in the next few weeks.
  — Bart Jansen, USA TODAY, 30 Sep. 2021
• Even if the thorny insurer issues are solved, most of the battle still remains, said Doe-Simkins.
  — Lev Facher, STAT, 31 Aug. 2023
• The call lasted more than two hours, according to the White House, reflecting the long and thorny agenda.
  — Francesca Chambers, USA TODAY, 28 July 2022
• The task force’s debates highlighted a thorny push-and-pull between city and county.
  — Christine Condon, Baltimore Sun, 26 Jan. 2024
• What had been a binding decision on the merits of a thorny issue was swept away.
  — John E. Jones Iii, The Conversation, 5 Apr. 2024
• But Dallas, like many Southern cities, suffers from a thorny past.
  — Abigail Ronner, Harper's BAZAAR, 11 May 2023
• No wonder that in times past, this tough tree was planted on farms and ranches as a thorny hedge to keep livestock in place.
  — Luke Miller, Better Homes & Gardens, 11 Sep. 2024
• Hip-hop has long posed thorny questions about how race and music interact and who has the right to profit from the culture.
  — August Brown, Los Angeles Times, 7 Aug. 2023
• The negotiations about who would bear the brunt of those cuts were extensive and thorny.
  — Rachel Monroe, The New Yorker, 27 Jan. 2023
• They might be forced to not wade into thorny issues of public concern.
  — Sonia Moghe, CNN, 11 Feb. 2022
• Still, the task of narrating the lives of Jacob and Wilhelm remains as thorny as the hedge that trapped Briar Rose’s suitors.
  — Jennifer Wilson, The New Yorker, 4 Nov. 2024
• One pressure point Netanyahu faces is the thorny issue of draft exemption for ultra-Orthodox teenagers.
  — Aluf Benn, Foreign Affairs, 4 Oct. 2024

Last Updated: 8 Dec 2024