Briar vs. Thorn: What’s the Difference?

• Briar (noun)

  Any of many plants with thorny stems growing in dense clusters, such as many in the Rosa, Rubus, and Smilax genera.

• Briar (noun)

  Anything sharp or unpleasant to the feelings.

• Briar (noun)

  The white heath, noshow=1, a thorny Mediterranean shrub.

• Briar (noun)

  A pipe for smoking, made from the roots of that shrub.

• Thorn (noun)

  A sharp protective spine of a plant.

• Thorn (noun)

  Any shrub or small tree that bears thorns, especially a hawthorn.

  “the white thorn”

  “the cockspur thorn”

• Thorn (noun)

  That which pricks or annoys; anything troublesome.

• Thorn (noun)

  A letter of Latin script (capital: Þ, small: þ), borrowed by Old English from the futhark to represent a dental fricative, then not distinguished from eth, but in modern use (in Icelandic and other languages, but no longer in English) used only for the voiceless dental fricative found in English thigh

• Thorn (verb)

  To thorn

• Briar (noun)

  any of a number of prickly scrambling shrubs, especially a wild rose.

• Briar (noun)

  a tobacco pipe made from woody nodules borne at ground level by a large woody plant of the heather family.

• Briar (noun)

  the tree heath, which bears the nodules from which briar pipes are made.

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