BRISTLE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Bristle

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/brˈɪsəl/ Listen

noun

Bristle n.

A short, stiff, coarse hair, as on the back of swine.

(Bot.) A stiff, sharp, roundish hair.

verb

Bristle v. t. (past & past part. bristled; pres. part. bristling)

To erect the bristles of; to cause to stand up, as the bristles of an angry hog; sometimes with up. "Now for the bare-picked bone of majesty Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest." "Boy, bristle thy courage up."

To fix a bristle to; as, to bristle a thread.

Bristle v. i.

To rise or stand erect, like bristles. "His hair did bristle upon his head."

To appear as if covered with bristles; to have standing, thick and erect, like bristles. "The hill of La Haye Sainte bristling with ten thousand bayonets." "Ports bristling with thousands of masts."

To show defiance or indignation.

To bristle up, to show anger or defiance.

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Etymology of 'Bristle'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Bristle" Quotes from Famous Books

... stared back. I had struck something I had been looking for for a long time, and till that moment I wasn't sure that it existed. Here was the German of caricature, the real German, the fellow we were up against. He was as hideous as a hippopotamus, but effective. Every bristle on his odd head ...

— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... the hill, every spar, brick and beam, carried its bristle of gold. At her own head's imperceptible movement flashes came and went between the ribs of the Bishop's Palace. The sentry by the tunnel stood between the upper and the underground:—with his left eye he could watch the lights that strung back into ...

— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... threw open, to find themselves face to face with the vicar, a little fresh-coloured, plump, grey man of five-and-forty. His brow was wrinkled with annoyance, and his grey hair and whiskers seemed to bristle, as he changed the stout cane into his left hand, pulled off his right glove, ...

— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... the radicle instead of travelling straight down the glass made a semicircular bend; but Fig. 52 shows that this may occur when the track is rectilinear. The apex by thus rising, was in one instance able to surmount a bristle cemented across an inclined glass-plate; but slips of wood only 1/40 of an inch in thickness always caused the radicles to bend rectangularly to one side, so that the apex did not rise to this small height in opposition ...

— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... world with a radiance wondrous to behold; and blinking drowsily, I wondered what had waked me. Now as I gazed about me the place seemed all at once to take on an evil look, what with its steepy sides a-bristle with tangled vines and bushes and pierced here and there with black holes and fissures, and I shivered. The fire being low I, minded to replenish it, was groping for my fuel when I started and remained peering up at the cliff above, with ears on the stretch ...

— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

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