Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Consisting of or similar to bristles.
- adjective Thick with bristles.
- adjective Exhibiting or tending to exhibit agitation or anger.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Thickly set with bristles, or with hairs like bristles; rough: as, “a bristly neck,”
- Resembling a bristle or bristles.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Thick set with bristles, or with hairs resembling bristles; rough.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Covered with
bristles .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective very irritable
- adjective having or covered with protective barbs or quills or spines or thorns or setae etc.
Etymologies
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Examples
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It was a startling assembly, not the least because with a few faintly yellow exceptions, the vroqupii were clad in short, bristly, rose-hued fur.
Voyage To The City Of The Dead Foster, Alan Dean, 1946- 1984
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As he makes the rounds at the zoo, Svitalsky stops to tweak a bristly, football-size ear, provoking a snort of delight from Nasima, the world's only breeding female rhino in captivity.
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National Action Party in 1994, he has been known as a bristly, cigar-chomping wheeler-dealer who seldom commented on, or acknowledged the existence of, Mexico's poor.
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National Action Party in 1994, he has been known as a bristly, cigar-chomping wheeler-dealer who seldom commented on, or acknowledged the existence of, Mexico's poor.
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Thorne: Kent's bristly personality can't erase Hall of Fame career
Thorne: Kent's bristly personality can't erase Hall of Fame career 2009
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Thorne: Kent's bristly personality can't erase Hall of Fame career - USATODAY. com
Thorne: Kent's bristly personality can't erase Hall of Fame career 2009
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That is bristly ox tongue, which you can use as salad or as greens.
Modern Hunter-Gatherers Bruce Palling 2011
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Pickle has short, bristly hair all over, mottled black and brown.
Angry Young Man Chris Lynch 2011
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You know, Chris had bristly eyebrows, and before we met he always had the barber trim them.
Christopher Isherwood remembered: 'Chris always loved young men, and I was certainly young' Peter Conrad 2010
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Football also makes people cross enough to become frantically upset about Neil Lennon, a man who, in normal life, might be the kind of slightly testy neighbour who occasionally leaves a note on your windscreen about wheelie bin maintenance, but who, in football, is deemed a bristly ginger hard-nut super villain.
It's time to admit football is pure evil | Barney Ronay 2011
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