Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A Mediterranean shrub or small tree (Erica arborea) whose hard, woody roots are used to make tobacco pipes.
- n. A pipe made from the root of this plant or from a similar wood.
- n. Variant of brier1.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- etc. See brier, briery, etc.
Wiktionary
- n. Any thorny plant, now especially a wild rose.
- n. The white heath, Erica arborea.
- n. A pipe made from the root of this plant.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Same as brier.
WordNet 3.0
- n. Eurasian rose with prickly stems and fragrant leaves and bright pink flowers followed by scarlet hips
- n. a pipe made from the root (briarroot) of the tree heath
- n. evergreen treelike Mediterranean shrub having fragrant white flowers in large terminal panicles and hard woody roots used to make tobacco pipes
- n. a very prickly woody vine of the eastern United States growing in tangled masses having tough round stems with shiny leathery leaves and small greenish flowers followed by clusters of inedible shiny black berries
Etymologies
- From French bruyère, assimilated with Etymology 1, above. (Wiktionary)
- French bruyère, heath, from Old French, from Vulgar Latin *brūcāria, from Late Latin brūcus, heather, of Celtic origin; see wer-2 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The rosa multiflora--the rambling rose, what I call the briar rose, because it is clearly the killer rose that protected Sleeping Beauty's castle for a century--is sending its arms across the path in the undiscovered country.”
“Finaly Brad says (calm and cool) "She's lieing right there" (points to spot 10ft. from blood on road in briar thicket).”
“To me she seems pretty much below the radar, and seen to have been pushed into the background aka the briar patch.”
If Republicans take the House in 2010, a possible Obama pivot to center?
“In England they are called briar-root pipes, briar being a corruption of the French word _bruyère_, signifying heath.”
“Mixed with the blue of the smoke from his briar was the deeper azure of a spirited monologue in which Grayson was engaged.”
“Hips are preferred; at least, the fruit of the briar is the first of the two to disappear.”
“Spam detection software, running on the system 'briar', has identified this incoming email as possible spam" if the email is spam.”
“Such an ethics thicket is exactly the kind of briar patch Republicans would love to be thrown into.”
“The 26 inch barrel would hang on every briar, limb, and vine in the woods and it balenced well forward of the action.”
This is kind of random, but do you think a sniper rifle make a good hunting gun?
“I had to track a doe into a blackberry briar hell after dark.”
How close have you been to an animal you were tracking before you actually found it?
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘briar’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 more...
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♥
ambrosia, inamorata, gossamer, lily-white, hummingbird, roucoulement, poppy, daisy, calypso, lunula, lamb, dove and 1526 more...
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Color Words for Shoes
Vendors can get oddly creative.
amaranth, brindle, iguana, slate black, madder brown, bison, pinecone, seal brown, forest night, burnt orange, monument, beet red and 399 more...
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colleen's words
yellow, green, pie, blue, fur, people, incense, book, brown, avuncular, mountain, fog and 1316 more...
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If-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-...
Words that have been used as baby names, including virtue names, nature names, place names, etc.
The title is an actual name given to a Puritan boy in the 17th century.faith, hope, grace, charity, chastity, prudence, patience, temperance, river, phoenix, stone, violet and 455 more...
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wreckingball's Words
reprehensible, problematize, crepuscular, deleterious, pestilent, strumpet, draggletail, interrobang, meretricious, systematize, schadenfreude, capricious and 443 more...
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Time for a new list!
abrupt, erupt, rupture, sync, appropinquity, heterochromia, homochromatic, monochromatic, willy nilly, nitty gritty, kowtow, wonton and 455 more...
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Words I like as names
It's exactly what it sounds like. And yeah, for real people as much as characters. Big surprise.
corbeau, alameda, hanabi, milk, promise, edelweiss, delphinium, jubilate, jubilance, jocoserious, arrow, angeles and 141 more...
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NakedFringe's Words
masticate, chamber, orchid, mandolin, yellow, pomegranate, conundrum, paradox, gyrate, calamitous, opalescent, cacophony and 533 more...
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thegirlnextfloor's list
autumnal, avalanche, silhouette, antique, abysmal, scorch, sonic, surge, symmetry, whisper, penchant, dissipate and 349 more...
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Cellar Door
It's the way the letters combine to form an beautiful whole and the way its sound tickles the ear.
capricious, sigh, jest, psyche, elf, wither, languish, wane, fade, caustic, pithy, epicene and 127 more...
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bobodod's Words
cultie, screwery, gauge, wanker, truthiness, harangue, mediocre, ragamuffin, elysian, spoonerism, loquacious, apostle and 240 more...
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Chromonyms
These chromonyms are defined as colors in at least one dictionary (mostly MW3). (Actually there's one fake, for reasons I'll explain someday.) They are all one-word nouns such as "kelly", which can...
absinthe, acacia, acorn, alabaster, alesan, almond, aloma, amaranth, amber, amethyst, anemone, anil and 821 more...
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SomeOldDoor's list
Lovely words.
clover, cedar, bromide, glyph, belfry, glance, vehemently, well, flourish, plaintive, clarion, element and 169 more...
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Turning and Twisting Tours
words in the nature of double spirals
swift, swerve, swirl, swivel, swarm, swag, swank, swoop, swinge, swarf, spire, esparto and 361 more...
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wordrainbow
A big list of color names for use on wordrainbow.com
emerald, cherry, coffee, cream, almond, gold, kiwi, green, grass green, aquamarine, beet red, sepia and 714 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for briar.
bilby "The next morning my ears, neck, shoulders and back looked as if I'd spent the night wrestling with thirty-three kittens in a briar patch crisscrossed with barbed wire during a hailstorm."
- 'The Dice Man', Luke Rhinehart. Feb 4, 2008