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thornbush

thorn·bushUK /ˈθɔːnˌbʊʃ/noun

thornbush is a noun meaning “Any of many thorny or spiny shrubs and bushes” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled T-H-O-R-N-B-U-S-H and has 2 syllables (thorn·bush), and it appears about once in every 40 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of thornbush is thornbushes.

What does thornbush mean?

noun

  1. 1

    Any of many thorny or spiny shrubs and bushes.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce thornbush?

  • UK /ˈθɔːnˌbʊʃ/
  • British /ˈθɔːnˌbɵʃ/
  • /ˈθɔɹnˌbʊʃ/

Thornbush has 2 syllables, split thorn·bush in writing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-thornbush.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Bytekast-thornbush.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of thornbush

  • thornbushes plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is thornbush?

Thornbush appears about once in every 40 million words in written English, the 194,306th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Thornbush in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense thorny shrub or bush:

LanguageWords
Frenchbuisson épineux, épineux, bruyère
GermanDornbusch
Portugueseespinheiro, sarça
Spanishzarzal, brezo

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does thornbush come from?

Compound of thorn + bush. Cognate with Dutch doornbos, German Dornbusch and Swedish törnbuske, all meaning the same and having the same elements (stemming from Proto-Germanic *þurnaz + *buskaz), thus they either share a common Germanic root or are calques of the German word.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).