Now rare. [f. prec. sb.]
1. trans. To make thorny, to furnish with thorns; esp. to protect (a newly planted quick-set hedge or the like) with dead thorn-bushes. Also absol.
1483. Cath. Angl., 384/1. To Thorne, dumare, spinare, dumere esse vel fieri, -escere.
1541. Nottingham Rec., III. 382. For thorns and for thornyng of wylo settes.
1579. Mem. St. Giles, Durham (Surtees), 1. Payde … for thornynge the wicke for saufegayrde of the shepe.
1784. Robinson, Lett., in N. & Q., 3rd Ser. IV. 342/2. [I] set a man to hedge and thorn.
1875. Browning, Aristophanes’ Apol., 630. Vowel-buds thorned about with consonants.
2. To prick with or as with a thorn; to vex.
1590. C’tess Pembroke, Antonie, 226. And thousand thousand woes Our heau’nly soules now thorne. Ibid., 917. This grief, nay rage,… thornes me still.
1778. Saberna, 16. A ruffian he!… Who stole a rose, and thorn’d the heart it blest!
1811. Coleridge, Lett., in J. P. Collier, Seven Lect. (1856), p. lvii. The perplexities with which … I have been thorned and embrangled.
1877. Tennyson, Harold, I. i. 243. I am the only rose of all the stock That never thorn’d him.
† 3. To attach or pin together with thorns. Obs.
1598. Sylvester, Du Bartas, II. i. IV. Handie-crafts, 140. With their sundry locks, thorn’d each to other, Their tender limbs they hide.
