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 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
• 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
• 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
• These thorny questions over the nature of athleticism are not new in women’s sports.
  — New York Times, 16 Feb. 2022
• No doubt the thorny topic of regulation will be teased out further there.
  — Eamon Barrett, Fortune, 1 Dec. 2023
• The deployment of conscripts is a thorny issue in Russia.
  — Ivana Kottasová, CNN, 16 Aug. 2024
• The vegetable, a relative of the thistle, features leathery, thorny green leaves or petals attached to a round base.
  — Ann Maloney, Washington Post, 2 Aug. 2022
• Then there’s the thorny issue of carrying on the best of Biden’s legacy, while also carving out Harris’s own identity with a newer, younger approach.
  — Jane Thier, Fortune, 25 Oct. 2024
• Unlike her wryly astute essays, the playwright scarcely reckons with the thorny nuances of mourning, and instead settles for a rather pat depiction of grief.
  — Patrick Ryan, USA TODAY, 24 Oct. 2024

Last Updated: 14 Nov 2024