Noun: thistle
| Singular | thistle |
| Plural | thistles |
Sample Sentences
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Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field [...]. [1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 3:18:]
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I wasn’t born of a whistle, or milked from a thistle at twilight / No; I was all horns and thorns, sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright [2006, Joanna Newsom, “Sawdust and Diamonds”, in Ys:]
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Here's a passage which will please you: ‘It is said that when rich he twice refused the thistle.’ [1978, Lawrence Durrell, Livia (Avignon Quintet), Faber & Faber, published 1992, page 324:]
Nouns inflected like thistle
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. From Middle English thistel, from Old English þistel, from Proto-West Germanic *þistil, from Proto-Germanic *þistilaz. *þīh- from *teyg-, which is a variant of Proto-Indo-European *(s)teyg- (“to prick”); from this same Proto-Indo-European root comes English stick.
2. Cognates include Scots thrissel, German Distel, Dutch distel, and Old Norse and Icelandic þistill. See: Middle English Nouns '
thistel', Old English Nouns '
þistel', English Nouns '
stick', German Nouns '
Distel', Dutch Nouns '
distel', Icelandic Nouns '
þistill'.