Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of several prickly plants, such as certain rosebushes or the greenbrier.
- n. Variant of briar1.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A prickly plant or shrub in general; specifically, the sweetbrier or the green-brier (which see). Also spelled briar.
Wiktionary
- n. A thorny Mediterranean shrub.
- n. A pipe made from the roots of that shrub.
- n. figuratively Any unpleasantry in general.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A plant with a slender woody stem bearing stout prickles; especially, species of Rosa, Rubus, and Smilax.
- n. Fig.: Anything sharp or unpleasant to the feelings.
- n. the white heath Erica arborea.
- n. a smoking pipe made of the root of the brier{1}.
WordNet 3.0
- n. tangled mass of prickly plants
- n. Eurasian rose with prickly stems and fragrant leaves and bright pink flowers followed by scarlet hips
- 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
- n. a thorny stem or twig
Etymologies
- Middle English brer, from Old English brēr. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The man and woman were employed in bruising what was called brier root, which they had dug from the forest, for food.”
“And is Lady S. pulling some kind of brier-patch scenario here?”
“Heb. hedek (Prov. 15: 19), rendered "brier" in Micah 7: 4.”
“Solanum sanctum (Heb. hedek), rendered "brier" (q.v.) in Micah”
“The word "brier" or "briar" has no connexion whatever with the prickly, thorny briar which bears the lovely wild rose.”
“We thanked her, entered, and went walking along a smooth road, through open sward, clumps of trees and an occasional piece of artful neglect in the shape of rough hillocks covered with wild shrubs, such as brier and broom.”
“The arrow was covered with blood but the deer ran into a cedar and brier thicket.”
how many people here have shot a deer and never found it, what did u shoot it with gun or bow.
“Yeah, Steve, it sure sounds like ‘Please, please, Brer Fox, don’t throw me in the brier patch.”
The Volokh Conspiracy » Looks Like Now We Need a Commercial Financial Protection Agency:
“Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico.”
“The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘brier’.
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wallace
Remington, Windsor, prorector, wen, aver, mottle, seltzer, tepee, lapidary, effete, sotto, presbyopia and 351 more...
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wickedwitch's list
lll
alit, plinth, eclat, diaphanous, portico, nival, daedal, apse, fossa, pellet, avail, midge and 143 more...
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Flora
fenugreek, verbena, saxifrage, arbutus, calendula, nasturtium, lobelia, hellebore, rhododendron, philodendron, bellflower, heuchera and 449 more...
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NeoVolt's Words
schadenfreude, serendipity, idiosyncrasy, loess, caducous, vagary, schematic, steeple, licentious, tangential, verisimilitude, vernacular and 385 more...
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the garden
"Won't you meet me at the gates
Won't you meet me at the gates
Won't you meet me at the gates
To the garden"oak, herbaceous, willow, pine, juniper, birch, cedar, yew, hawthorn, honeysuckle, lilac, lavender and 71 more...
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fairy tale elements
focusing on nouns that evoke fairy tales
dove, tower, garden, mirror, bramble, hunter's moon, hind, changeling, briar, brier, raven, wood and 2 more...
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Words that I like based on what they ...
These are words which are not necessary special, but because of what they refer to (as they are often nouns), I have come to enjoy even seeing and using the word alone.
Tweets
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