Dictionary

thornback en · NOUN

Etymology

From Middle English thornbak; equivalent to thorn + back.

Meanings

1. Any animal with a thorny back, especially marine animals, such as: ▸ The thornback guitarfish (Platyrhinoidis triseriata), a species of ray in the north-eastern Pacific Ocean.
2. Any animal with a thorny back, especially marine animals, such as: ▸ The thornback ray or thornback skate (Raja clavata), a species of ray in the Atlantic Ocean.
3. Any animal with a thorny back, especially marine animals, such as: ▸ 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.
   • "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. 2009, Suzy Witten, The Afflicted Girls, →ISBN, page 131:
   • 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 […] 1920, Anna Mary Galbraith, The Family and the New Democracy: A Study in Social Hygiene, page 184:
   • [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 Financial Revolution, 1690-1750, Oxford University Press, page 46

Forms