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thistle

UK/fɪsəl/US/θɪsl̩/
nounB1+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,966 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: thistles

A thistle is a prickly plant with a purple tuft, the badge of Scotland. A field of thistles, cut the thistles, the Scottish thistle.

The story behind the badge is that a barefoot Norse raider trod on one and cried out, giving the alarm. The seed head is the thistledown that blows about in late summer, and goldfinches feed on the seeds.

Andreiflorea993 · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of thistle

  1. 1nounthistleA prickly plant with a purple tuft.B1+

    “He sat on a thistle by mistake and jumped up with a yell.”

thistle is a plant.

Where it comes from

Old English thistel, from a Germanic root, probably related to a word meaning to prick.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *(s)teyg- — to prick

  2. Proto-Germanic

    *þistilaz

  3. Proto-West Germanic

    *þistil

  4. Old English

    þistel

  5. Middle English

    thistel

  6. English, today

    thistle

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. Cognates include Scots thrissel, German Distel, Dutch distel, and Old Norse - and Icelandic þistill.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Trees & Flowers

Practise this word

thistle in the wild

  • The order's primary emblem is the thistle, the national flower of Scotland.

    Order of the Thistle

  • Cirsium is a genus of perennial and biennial flowering plants in the Asteraceae, one of several genera known commonly as thistles.

    Cirsium

  • Cirsium setidens is used as a vegetable in Korean cuisine. 'Cirsium' is the Greek word for thistle, kirsos, likely derived from 'swollen vein'.

    Cirsium

  • Marsh thistle, Cirsium palustre, was ranked in first place while this thistle was ranked in sixth place.

    Cirsium vulgare

  • The standard English name in its native area is creeping thistle.

    Cirsium arvense

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.