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Glite Dictionary
✝️ Mock crown for Jesus 🌵 A spiny plant 😣 A painful burden
crown of thorns

crown of thorns

1 9.5
A ring of thorn branches put on Jesus' head to mock and hurt him before his death on the cross
  • noun
  • /kraʊn əv θɔrnz/
  • NSFW
translation icon : corona de espinas
  • The fresco, titled Ecce Homo (Behold the Man), is a depiction of Jesus Christ with a crown of thorns.
  • crown of thorns on Jesus
  • crown of thorns on Christ
  • wore the crown of thorns

Examples

  • And the only crown he ever wore was a crown of thorns.

    Blog text (13)

  • And at a place called Calvary... ...they crucified him, with a crown of thorns upon his head.

    Quo Vadis (1951)

  • He lay on the floor, scourged, exhausted, a crown of thorns upon his head.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • Jesus's crown of thorns is said to reside in the church of Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.

    Fiction book (2002)

  • Jesus wore a crown of thorns during his crucifixion as a symbol of mockery.

  • The crown of thorns was placed on Jesus' head to humiliate him before his death.

  • In art, the crown of thorns represents the suffering that Christ endured for humanity.

Surface Forms

crown of thorns singular
crowns of thorns plural

Morphology

crown + of + thorn

The phrase is directly compositional: 'crown' + 'of' + 'thorns' straightforwardly denotes a crown made from thorns, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words can infer the literal object. While the deeper Christian/religious significance (mockery/torture of Jesus) requires background knowledge, the basic referent is transparent from the parts.

Etymology

Crown of thorns comes from Christian tradition where soldiers made a mock crown from sharp thorns and put it on Jesus' head to hurt and shame him, so the object is a strong 'symbol of suffering' in religion and art.