Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Bristle   Listen
noun
Bristle  n.  
1.
A short, stiff, coarse hair, as on the back of swine.
2.
(Bot.) A stiff, sharp, roundish hair.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Bristle" Quotes from Famous Books



... was in my seat ready to defend the originality of the Nore Napkin Ring, so to speak, to the death. In my notes before me I had the skeleton of a really fine oration, which I felt (if I mastered my normal nervousness) would bristle with epigram, and thrill with heartfelt, brain-inspired eloquence. So deeply interested was I in the matter, that I scarcely listened to my friend's opening, and only became aware of what was happening in Court by ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various

... this prana aura without trouble. It is sometimes called the 'health aura,' or 'physical aura.' It is colorless, or rather about the shade of clear glass, diamond, or water. It is streaked with very minute, bristle-like lines. In a state of good health these fine lines are stiff like toothbrush bristles; while in the case of poor health these lines droop, curl, and present a furlike appearance. It is sometimes filled with minute sparkling particles, like ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... shoulders of a young story writer—between us, be it said, he made a mistake in not combing it oftener—imparted to his brothers the subject for his new novel, which should have made the hair of the others bristle with terror; for the principal episode in this agreeable fiction was the desecration of a dead body in a cemetery by moonlight. There was a sort of hesitation in the audience, a slight movement of recoil, and Sillery, with a dash of raillery in ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... came to me yesterday while I waited for her at Lancaster Gate. The things in your drawing-room there were like the forms of the strange idols, the mystic excrescences, with which one may suppose the front of the car to bristle." ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James

... expression of affection made by him. But the man had the better of it at first, chiefly because he was a man. It was patent that Wolf had had no experience with women. He did not understand women. Madge's skirts were something he never quite accepted. The swish of them was enough to set him a-bristle with suspicion, and on a windy day she could ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London

... skilled worker. Their day's pay had already fallen from twelve francs to nine francs. There was talk of cutting it again. He stared at it, frowning, for three minutes without saying a word. His yellow beard seemed to bristle defiantly. Then, gradually an expression of resignation came over his face and he turned toward Gervaise who was clinging tightly to him and ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... to answer, and which he had been obliged to refer to Roden and Von Holzen. These had replied readily, and the matter as solved by them seemed simple enough. But each question seemed to have side issues—indeed, the whole scheme appeared suddenly to bristle with side issues, and Tony Cornish began to find himself getting really ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman

... she gave a sudden poke to her frisette, giving to it a diagonal bristle which extremely increased its usually severe expression; and any one contemplating her at the moment would have thought that for Moses Pennel, or any other young man, to come with tender propositions in that direction would have been indeed ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... my dear child, don't bristle up! I am very fond of you, and would dearly love to have you for a sister—if you'd only take William, as you should! But, as you very well know, I never did approve of this last match at all, for either of ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter

... its two poles, positive and negative, in pleasure and pain. This activity has always greatly embarrassed philosophers, who have attempted either to deny it as an activity, or to attribute it to nature and to exclude it from spirit. Both solutions bristle with difficulties, and these are of such a kind that the solutions prove themselves finally unacceptable to anyone who examines them with care. For of what could a non-spiritual activity consist, an activity of nature, when we have no other knowledge of activity save as spiritual, and of ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... of springs as a watch; faro decks were carefully cut "strippers." An average good dealer would shuffle and arrange as he liked the favorite cards of known high-rollers. These had been neatly split on either edge and a minute bit of bristle pasted in, which no ordinary touch would feel, but which the sand-papered finger tips of an expert dealer would catch and slip through on the shuffle and place where they would do (the house) the most good. The "tin horns" gave out few but false notes; the roulette balls were kicked silly out ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... is told that name of dread, Through the Levant so feared on every side, Whose mention made the hair on many a head Bristle, though she was often distant wide. He fears the ill may happen which is said, Unless against the mischief he provide; And hence his meiny, who have changed their ire Already into fear, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... bright eyes and I 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 ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... of the usual colour—blue with a sprinkling of black spots. This dog had an intense hatred of adders and never failed to kill every one he discovered. At the same time he knew that they were dangerous enemies to tackle, and on catching sight of one his hair would instantly bristle up, and he would stand as if paralysed for some moments, glaring at it and gnashing his teeth, then springing like a cat upon it he would seize it in his mouth, only to hurl it from him to a distance. ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... black and straight. Now it seemed fairly to bristle with amazement. "I couldn't take you if you was grown-up," he asserted firmly, blocking her advance; "—leastways not without Miss Royle or Jane'd say Yes. It'd be ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates

... great mouth, and an horrible, and in either jaw three rows of teeth distinguished atween. The outer limbs thereof be as it were the outer limbs of a lion, and his tail is like to a wild scorpion, with a sting, and smiteth with hard bristle pricks as a wild swine, and hath an horrible voice, as the voice of a trumpet, and he runneth full swiftly, and eateth men. And among all beasts of the earth is none found more cruel, nor more wonderly shape, as Avicenna saith. And this beast ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele

... throws a glimmer similar to that of a lamp burning during the night; that one, O Titan! represents thy resplendent face; and this other, O Phoebe! the form of thy nascent horns. There are some which bristle with twisted serpents. Shall I speak of those armies which have sometimes appeared in the air? of those clouds which follow as it were along a circle, or which resemble the head of Medusa? Have there not often been seen figures ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... an open mind. And spare no expense. Get a special detective,—a big one,—there now, don't bristle! I don't suppose you think yourself the cleverest in the world, do you? Don't you admit any superior? If so, get him; if not, then prove your own worth. I repeat, I want no undue favor shown to McClellan Thorpe, but if he is not the guilty man, then I want you ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... they have refused to be seduced from their allegiance to the party of freedom, and their enemies have wreaked their vengeance, without hindrance, so that the attitude books of every Southern state bristle with a code of laws as infamous and oppressive as the slave code. But that does not affect the principle in the least, and the principle is the thing; it is the essence of all life. He who clings to it, though he may die, as the poor Indian has done, deserves and receives the respect ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... few sheds, a dozen trees, and an artificial pond filled to the brim by the recent rains. Here drawn up in the spacious plain were the Royal Dragoons—distinguished from the Colonial Corps by the bristle of lances bare of pennons above their ranks and by their great horses—one squadron of the already famous Imperial Light Horse, and Bethune's Mounted Infantry. The Dragoons remained at the farm, which was that night to be the camping place of Clery's division. But all the rest of the mounted ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... whole box of masks it had been the Bengal Tiger's fiercely bewhiskered visage that had fascinated Flame the most. Regretfully from its more or less nondescript companions, she picked up the Bengal Tiger now and pulled at its real, bristle-whiskers. In one of the chairs a dog stirred quite irrelevantly. Cocking her own head towards the wood-shed Flame could not be perfectly sure whether she heard a twinge of cat or a twinge of conscience. ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... quivering adjectives. It is not necessary to undress a woman to know her. She reveals herself almost as piquantly in moods. I will be the father of moods. And, as a recreation, I will sit and watch the days in their unchanging flight. I bristle with rhetoric. It is a symptom of sanity. I am grateful for this ability to ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht

... proportion of our English- speaking race, in both hemispheres, closing the volume of its own annals, have made up their minds to the belief that these Border- lands between German and Magyar, Teuton and Latin, Russ and Pole, bristle with antagonisms the like of which never were subdued, and never ought to be subdued by human means or motives. To them, naturally, the half century of this hissing and seething, insurrection and repression, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... whitened face made his unshaven beard seem to bristle over his face like some wild animal's. "Well, ef you kalkilate to blow me, you've got to blow Wade and his widder too. Jest you ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... son led forth, And plac'd in Menelaus' hands the mare: The monarch's soul was melted, like the dew Which glitters on the ears of growing corn, That bristle o'er the plain; e'en so thy soul, O Menelaus, melted at his speech; To whom were thus address'd thy ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... instant and startling change in Big Tom. The smile went from the bloodshot eyes, giving place to that white flash of rage. The heavy nose gave a quick twist. Every hair in the short beard seemed to bristle. "Now there's somebody in this room that's gittin' fresh," he observed; "and freshness from a kid is somethin' I can't stand. I don't mention no name, but! If it happens again"—he paused for emphasis—"I'll slap the fancy eyeglasses right off ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... snowy owl was digging away like a Trojan, tearing out sand and seaweed with his great claws, first one foot, then the other, like a hungry hen, and sending it up in showers behind him over the old mast. Every few moments he would stop suddenly, bristle up all his feathers till he looked comically big and fierce, take a look out over the log and along the beach, then fall to ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... the United States, which is comparable to China in situation and in extent. Though there are 60 species of oak in China, many with magnificent foliage and remarkable cupules, the red oaks, so characteristic of North America, with their bristle-pointed leaves, turning beautiful colours in autumn, are quite unknown. The great coniferous forest west of the Rocky Mountains has no analogue in China, the gigantic and preponderant Douglas fir being absent, while the giant Sequoias are represented only on a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... "The simple cow knows her way to the hay!" Nor do I regard it as evidence of notable mental gifts to answer the greeting of the inoffensive duck, "The quack shoots off his mouth!" No, the extravagances of that Blackbird, who makes me bristle, no more constitute wit than his slang ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand

... dim distance which their eyes cannot penetrate. But, from the fraction which you do project, they construct another you, call it by your name, and pass it around for the real, the actual you. You bristle with jest and laughter and wild whims, to keep them at a distance; and they fancy this to be your every-day equipment. They think your life holds constant carnival. It is astonishing what ideas spring up in the heads of sensible people. There are those who assume that a person ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... Knox," he said, breaking into an amused smile, "how we bristle when someone tries to prove that we are not infallible! How human we are, Knox, but how fortunate that ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... hair-like legs arranged straight before and behind them, it is difficult to detect them, so closely do they resemble a discoloured stripe on the herbage. A species of Tetragnatha with a curious modification of structure abounds on the pampas. The long leg of this spider is no thicker than a bristle from a pig's back, but at the extremity it is flattened and broad, giving it a striking resemblance to an oar. These spiders are only found in herbage overhanging the borders of streams: they are very numerous, and, having a pugnacious temper, are incessantly quarrelling; and it ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... say there was everything in the way," answered Lenora. "In the first place, there is Kate Kirby, and who, after seeing her handsome face, would ever look at such a black, turned-up nose, bristle-headed thing as I am? But I perceive there is some weighty secret on your mind, so what is it? Have Walter and Kate quarreled, or have you told him some falsehood ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes

... policy. I did not know that he disapproved of the policy in question, but I found on speaking to him that he was in a towering passion at my having opposed the policy which he preferred. He grew pale with rage; the hair on his head seemed to bristle, his eyes flashed fire; he slammed down a bundle of papers in his hand on the table, he stamped with passion; and I confess that it was profoundly disturbing and disconcerting. I felt for a moment that ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... powerful, like one great block of rugged stone, the parapet twinkling with steel caps and crowned by the royal banner of England. A flat expanse of reeded marshland lay before them, out of which rose a single wooded hill, crowned with towers, with a bristle of masts rising out of the green plain some distance to the south of it. Nigel looked at it with his hand shading his eyes, and then urged Pommers to a trot. The town was Winchelsea, and there amid that cluster of houses on the hill the gallant ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... archway; for he had suddenly remembered with compelling vividness that Sophia Farrell was to be won only by that passage. But as he moved the swords clattered afresh and swung outwards, presenting a bristle of points. And he stopped, while the Voice, indifferent and remote as always, continued to ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... Bristle and said to him: "Assemble all the nobility in the great reception hall, and also tell Blinkem that I ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... turned far eastward toward Attica and took refuge on the foothills of the mountains. But speed was more precious than safety. He passed Scolus, and found the village desolate, burned. No human being greeted him, only one or two starving dogs rushed forth to snap, bristle, and be chased away by a well-sent stone. Here and yonder in the fields were still the clusters of crows picking at carrion,—more tokens that Mardonius's Tartar raiders had done their work too well. Then at last, an hour or more before the sunset, just as the spurs of Cithaeron, the long mountain ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... gigantic granite jewel, which is as light in its effect as a bit of lace and is covered with towers, with slender belfries to which spiral staircases ascend. The flying buttresses raise strange heads that bristle with chimeras, with devils, with fantastic ani-mals, with monstrous flowers, are joined together by finely carved arches, to the blue sky by day, and to the ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... loud chapel-clock tolled another hour all the trunks had been sent empty away. The carpet was unflecked by any scrap of silver-paper. From the mantelpiece, photographs of Zuleika surveyed the room with a possessive air. Zuleika's pincushion, a-bristle with new pins, lay on the dimity-flounced toilet-table, and round it stood a multitude of multiform glass vessels, domed, all of them, with dull gold, on which Z. D., in zianites and diamonds, was encrusted. ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... Carolina! Cite wealth and science, trade and art, Touch with thy fire the cautious mart, And pour thee through the people's heart, Carolina! Till even the coward spurns his fears, And all thy fields, and fens, and meres, Shall bristle like thy palm, with ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... struck me as an exciting smoke," observed Bat Scanlon, from the opposite side of the table. "The tobacco, like most things from the Balkans, is a little unsettled; and the wild porker means battle with every bristle." ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... For, more than once, the arrow shot by one man would be split wide open by his successor. Every man's shaft bore his number to ease the counting; and so close would they stick at the end of a round, that the target looked like a big bristle hairbrush. Then must the spectators relieve their tense spirits by great cheering; while the King looked mighty proud ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... again and you find that it continues to bristle with dangerous possibilities for us. You will recall that one of the clauses forbids the resumption of a favoured-nation arrangement with enemy countries for a period "to be fixed by mutual agreement." This may be for ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... bright, flooding the 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 ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... babies tied in a bundle behind them, or half-naked children clinging to their loin-cloths, nods approval. But Salam's face is a study. In place of contemptuous indifference there is now rising anger, terrible to behold. His brows are knitted, his eyes flame, his beard seems to bristle with rage. The tale of prices is hardly told before, with a series of rapid movements, he has tied every bundle up, and is thrusting the good things back into the hands of their owners. His vocabulary is strained to its fullest ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan

... in Gothic architecture, the taste of the age is largely in favor of the pointed styles. Our churches and our books must bristle all over with points, or they are not so much ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... the very threat of it is known as the first degree. I was in despair. Death I could suffer. But under torments I feared that my strength might fail. I felt my flesh creeping and tightening upon my body, which had grown very cold with the awful chill of fear; my hair seemed to bristle and stiffen until I thought that I could feel each separate ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... the uplands of Albania and Turkey, the wind scours the sand and the dust, and sows itself thick with dry particles. And then it pelts the smooth domes of the mosques, and makes the cypresses, standing stiff by the turbaned tombstones of Mohammedans, creak and bristle. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... refused to be driven at all, and struggled and floundered as desperately as if he already had a vivid presentiment of the frying-pan, snapping viciously at my fingers whenever I undertook to lay hold of him. To add to the aggravating features of the case, he seemed to bristle all over with an inordinate and unreasonable quantity of sharp-pointed fins and spines, which must have been designed by nature as weapons of defence, since there were certainly more of them than any fish could use to advantage for swimming purposes. I began to suspect that I ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... to one foot, scratched his head. Somehow, this was not quite what he had expected. He had thought Dolly more changed about this flying business; and here she seemed—well, not so very much changed. Within him he felt something vaguely bristle. It was still bristling there the next morning, and gave to his voice a certain brusqueness when, kissing Dolly on the forehead after breakfast, he said: ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... found that a headache was the result of confinement to an atmosphere somewhat heavily charged with electricity. Mrs. Rayner seemed to bristle every time she approached her sister. Possibly it was the heart, more than the head, that ached, but in either case she needed relief from the exposed position she had occupied ever since Kate's return from the Clancys' in the morning. She had been too long under fire, and was ...
— The Deserter • Charles King

... this surveying, madam? You bristle up to me, and wheel about me, like a turkey-cock that is making love: Faith, how do ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... with anger, his jet-black eyes flashed, and his white hair seemed to bristle with rage. He paced the floor for a few moments, and then turning to Jefferson, who had not moved, ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein

... the Isle of the Shamrock, Here's a good English hurrah, Luck to the Kelt upon kopje or veldt, Erin Mavourneen gobragh. The shamrock, the rose, and the thistle, The shamrock, the rose, and the leek, One where the bayonets bristle, One when there's duty to seek. Each has a need of each other, Linked on the shore and the wave, All for the sake of one Mother— ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... dangling from hooks, all proclaimed the neighborhood of the docks. The Admiral quickened his pace and straightened his figure as his surroundings became more nautical, until at last, peeping between two high, dingy wharfs, he caught a glimpse of the mud-colored waters of the Thames, and of the bristle of masts and funnels which rose from its broad bosom. To the right lay a quiet street, with many brass plates upon either side, and wire blinds in all of the windows. The Admiral walked slowly down it until "The Saint Lawrence Shipping Company" caught his eye. He ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle

... yet confirmed in misogyny— They are all very well in their way— But my heart is as hard as mahogany, When I think of the ladies in May. I shudder at each railway-whistle, Like a very much victimized lamb; For I know that the carriages bristle ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling

... the interposition of a miracle in his favour. In the first transports of his dread, he ran to the window, with a view to escape by that outlet, and found his flight effectually obstructed by divers strong bars of iron. Then his heart began to palpitate, his hair to bristle up, and his knees to totter; his thoughts teemed with presages of death and destruction; his conscience rose up in judgment against him, and he underwent a severe paroxysm of dismay and distraction. ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... was on him: as he stepped, A keen pang through his senses swept, For, pierced by the venomous bristle, his sight Saw gloom shroud the mountain, and ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... received, as we passed, with much staring; here and there a lifting of hats, and some blunt nodding that incensed me, but he, feeling me bristle, squeezed my hand and talked of the scene, and ever and anon gathered a line of heads and shed an indulgent bow along them-; so on to the Casino. Not once did he offend my taste and make my acute sense of self-respect ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... bristle up. She is very civil; but when I hint that Armine has study and health to consider, I see that in her eyes I am the worldly obstructive mother who serves as ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Meriwether sat up and began to bristle. "Well, at least, you have the expense of her funeral; and I 'm glad of it," she asserted ...
— Old Jabe's Marital Experiments - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... had got accustomed to Polly, whom they rather liked; Maggie they barely tolerated; but the firm steps of three strangers approaching the hut caused them to bristle up, to call all their canine ferocity to their aid, and to ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade

... bent back, struck out streams of blinding sparks. Brass buttons on the patroon's broad coat-skirts twinkled like yellow stars, and the spurs flashed on his quarter-gaiters as he pounded along at a solid hand-gallop, hat crammed over his fat ears, pig-tail a-bristle, and the blue coat on his enormous body ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... was the "Battery of Yerba Buena," facing the island from which it took its name. Rezanov scrupulously kept his word and did not raise his glass, but one contemptuous glance satisfied his curiosity. His eye rolled over the steep hills that were designed to bristle with forts, and, as sometimes happened, when he spoke again to Concha, whom he kept close to his side, for the other girls bored him, his words did not express the ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... quarter of the town, too, where it had not taken place. "That was a terrible affair in a hen-roost. I cannot sleep alone to-night. It is a good thing that many of us sit on the roost together." And then she told a story that made the feathers on the other hens bristle up, and the cock's comb fall. There was no ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... Seas, I have been exceedingly careful not to exaggerate, or in any way to mislead or deceive my readers. This cloth, I say, was remarkably like to coarse brown cotton cloth. It had a seam or fibre down the centre of it, from which diverged other fibres, about the size of a bristle. There were two layers of these fibres, very long and tough, the one layer crossing the other obliquely, and the whole was cemented together with a still finer fibrous and adhesive substance. When we regarded it attentively, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... slight changes, the words in which he relates them. He never hesitated to change a date if it served his purpose, much as an artist will change the position of a tree in a landscape to suit the exigencies of composition. His five volumes of autobiography bristle with coincidences so amazing that, if they were actually true, he must have been the most remarkable genius on record for attracting to himself strange adventures. He met the sailor son of the old Apple-Woman returning from his enforced exile; Murtagh tells him of how the postilion frightened the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... what the Steward said, and as to Donn, he thought to strike his head off till Finn put him back from him. Then the Steward came again, having a Druid rod with him, and he struck his own son with the rod, and he made of him a wild boar, without bristle or ear or tail, and he said: "I put you under bonds to bring Diarmuid, grandson of Duibhne, to his death; and your own life will be no longer than his life," he said. With that the wild boar rose up and ran out of the open door; and he was called afterwards the Boar ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory

... Lady Sarah Tewkesbury, who had been showing a rustic niece the beauties of the river, as seen from Fareham House. "Even Mr. Taylor, whose sermons bristle with elegant allusions, never points one of his passionate climaxes with a Shakespearian line. And yet there are some very fine lines in Hamlet and Macbeth, which would scarce sound amiss from the pulpit," added her ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... themselves they lost, And drank oblivion of their native coast. Instant her circling wand the goddess waves, To hogs transforms them, and the sty receives. No more was seen the human form divine; Head, face, and members, bristle into swine: Still cursed with sense, their minds remain alone, And their own voice ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... of the hair, feathers, and dermal appendages of animals were the subject of much careful inquiry. Chimpanzees, monkeys, baboons, and many other creatures, were tested in the Zoological Gardens. A stuffed snake taken into the monkey-house caused several species to bristle. When Darwin showed the same to a peccary, the hair rose in a wonderful manner along its back. A cassowary erected its feathers at sight of ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... sailed along, numerous birds of the most gorgeous plumage were seen either resting on the boughs or flying overhead across the stream. Among them were several species of trogons and little bristle-tailed manakins. We saw also the curious black umbrella-bird; which is so called from having a hood like an umbrella spread over its head. Flocks of paroquets were seen, and bright blue chatterers; and now and ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston

... touched for a moment with the sense of things forlorn and far away. The singer still roared, though the tune was caressing, languishing, a love song. But his eyes rolled fiercely, and his moustache seemed to bristle ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... facing us, his back resting against the rock, and his hands splayed on either side upon the floor, sat the eunuch—dead! His eyes and mouth were open, his fat cheeks dropped down, his thin hair yet seemed to bristle, and on his countenance was frozen such a stamp of hideous terror as well might turn the beholder's brain. And lo! fixed to his chin, by its hinder claws, hung that grey and mighty bat, which, flying forth when we entered the pyramid, vanished in the sky, but, returning, ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... subsistence, the letter of credit must be delivered into the hands of the beadle as security. Yet such little incidents are but slight annoyances at most, which a little good-humor and desire to conform to the habits and ways of doing of the country will remove. He who goes abroad always ready to bristle up against what does not exactly conform to his preconceived ideas of propriety, measuring and weighing all things with his own national weights and measures, will be continually making himself disagreeable and unhappy, and in the end profit little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... that way, I believe, than anywhere else in the world, unless it be Egypt. There is a little village called Pemaquid, where they fence it in and charge an admission. I know of a dozen places where there are old Indian villages; old fort sites; old burial-places that fairly bristle with mystery! If you go anywhere near them the natives will ask you to go and look at this spot, or that, and act as if they expected you to take off your hat while they tell all about it in an awed whisper. Oh, we have mystery to burn down in Maine! Maine would just suit you, Manson! ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... his uncle were down at the yard gate, which they 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 ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... the wall of the Mission-house and sprang from their horses which they left loose. As they advanced side by side towards the open gate, something leapt the stoep and rushed through it. It was a striped hyena; they could see the hair bristle on its back as it passed them with a whining growl. Hand in hand they ran to the house across the little garden patch—Rachel, led by some instinct, guiding her companion straight to her parents' room whereof ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... his body (which I have tried to show in the engraving). When he lets them out of this pocket into the vast ocean world to shift for themselves, they are only a quarter of an inch long, no thicker than a bristle, and almost transparent. ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... are well understood. The subject is one of the most difficult which the astronomer has to encounter in the whole range of his science. He has here to calculate what effect one planet is capable of producing on another planet. Such calculations bristle with formidable difficulties, and can only be overcome by consummate skill in the loftiest branches of mathematics. Let us state ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... their hundred volumes of tales put together. What insight, what weight, and faithfulness, and refinement, and breadth, and truth, and elevation of character and conception, does the framework of incident support and display? That is the aesthetic question. The novels of every day bristle with this material inventiveness, this small, abounding, tangled underwood of event and sensation, which yields no timber and wherein birds will not build. The invention exhibited in the punishments and tortures and conditions ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... and place it on the edge of my hand, which is simply moistened, so that it may not adhere too closely. I oblige it to contract more and more, and this also enlarges the stomach and mouth. The worm then is partly coming out of the mouth, and, keeping it open, I then take in my right hand a hog's bristle, rather thick and without a point, and I hold it as one holds a lancet for bleeding. I bring its thickest end to the hind end of the polype and push it, making it enter into its stomach, which is the more easily ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton

... two-footed ones they call human—only we aren't really more than half so—have to keep our claws well hidden and purr hypocritically, no matter how roughly the world rubs our fur the wrong way, nor how wild we are to scratch and spit and bristle! Wouldn't you like to be a ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous

... the effects of time. The northern nations have not given to Italy that warlike aspect which Germany has preserved. It seems that the gentle soil of Ausonia was unable to support the fortifications and citadels which bristle in northern countries. Rarely is a Gothic edifice or a feudal castle to be met with here; and the monuments of the ancient Romans reign alone triumphant over Time, and the nations by whom they have ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... easy to imagine two objects more widely different in appearance than a bristle or vibraculum, and an avicularium like the head of a bird; yet they are almost certainly homologous and have been developed from the same common source, namely a zooid with its cell. Hence, we can understand how it is that these organs graduate in some cases, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... that he was really much interested in his craft. Rather he visualised a story very vividly, and then it seemed to him the finest fun in the world to spin it all as rapidly as he could out of his brain, to make it all alert with glancing life. It was all a personal confession; his books bristle with his own dreams, his own dilemmas, his own social relations; and when he had once firmly realised the Catholic attitude, it seemed to him the one thing worth ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson

... his long struggle with birth and death had begun to tell upon him. He had already visited Lot that morning, after a hard night with a patient, back in the hills. His face was haggard under its sharp gray bristle of beard; his eyes fierce, like an old dog's, with fatigue and hunger. He had just reached home and sat down to his breakfast when this new call came. He had thought Lot was dying from Madelon's imperative summons, and she had not undeceived him. She was growing cunning in her desperate efforts ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... made his hair fairly bristle. He contented himself, however, with drawing up the programme of an immediate war between France ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... hair seemed all a-bristle. Her black eyes flamed. Her dark face worked like a quicksand. Her skirts were wet to the waist. Her jacket was open at the top, as though she had wrenched at it in a fit of choking. Her strong bare throat throbbed convulsively. Her hands, half closed at her side, ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... A bristle-whiskered German giant under a canvas-covered helmet stuck his head through the flaps, and for more than ten minutes he and another sentinel searched our knapsacks and credentials and inspected the Government mail ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green

... quivering in them, that the iris seemed to fill the whole orbit, which became circular, and sank back into the head. At these moments his complexion became livid and cadaverous; his brow, especially just over the nose, was covered with deep wrinkles, and his beard appeared to bristle, and to assume its bluish hues. But, after a few moments, his features became again serene, with a sweet smile reposing upon them, and his expression relaxed into ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould

... age. "It will cost me, my George, me and many an honorable man his life. The truth and the Church will suffer calamity, but God will not forsake them!" In the pulpit he spake in a similar strain: "Thou wilt not punish pride, Zurich. Well then! thou wilt be punished thyself; a hedge of thorns will bristle about thy head. The chain is forged, which will twist my neck and that of many a pious Zuricher. Still, God will maintain His Word, and ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... elsewhere. Indeed, they are among the most common of the birds depicted. Two species only seem to occur in the writings, the king vulture and the black vulture. The former is a large black and white bird with the head and the upper part of the neck unfeathered, except for numerous short, almost bristle-like plumules. These naked portions are often colored red and there is a large more or less squarish fleshy knob at the base of the upper ramus of the beak. This conspicuous protuberance has been seized upon as a characteristic ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen

... which have their posterior legs placed almost on their backs, for the purpose of adhering to the under side of rocks), is very remarkable from the structure of its hind pair of legs. The penultimate joint, instead of terminating in a simple claw, ends in three bristle-like appendages of dissimilar lengths — the longest equalling that of the entire leg. These claws are very thin, and are serrated with the finest teeth, directed backwards: their curved extremities are ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... "The Dardanelles bristle with Krupp cannon, Mr. Neeland, manned by German gunners. Von der Goltz Pasha has made of a brave people a splendid army. As for ships, the ironclads and gunboats off Seraglio Point are rusting at anchor, as ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... of instruction, is the drive in the opposite direction to Kehl. We are here approaching friendly frontiers, yet the aspect is hardly less dreadful. True that cannon do not bristle on the outer line of the triple fortifications; otherwise the state of things is similar. We see lines of vast powder magazines, enormous barracks of recent construction, preparations for defence, on a scale altogether inconceivable and indescribable. Little wonder that meat is a shilling ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... and waving crests hurling themselves against fragile outbursts and wretched parings! We shall see the ingenious architect of style defending himself against immense periods. Then, the close hairs of his thick mane all a-bristle, the giant will knit his terrible brow; he will pull out verses as solidly bolted together as the framework of a ship and will hurl them forth with a roar, while the pretty speaker with the supple and sharpened tongue, who weighs each syllable and submits ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... the kindliest of critics, but now and then some popular novelist's conceit will cause him to bristle up ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... 1883. Several years after, Mr. Rokeby was smoking, alone, in the dining-room early in the evening, when the dog began to bristle up his hair, and bark. Mr. Rokeby looked up and saw the woman in grey, with about half her figure passed through the slightly open door. He ran to the door, but she was gone, and the servants were engaged in ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang

... surveying us from behind one of the trees—a man's face, every feature of which was distorted by the most malignant hatred and anger. Finding himself observed, he stepped out and advanced towards us, when I saw that it was none other than the general himself. His beard was all a-bristle with fury, and his deepset eyes glowed from under their heavily veined lids with a most sinister and ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

... quill stem, you know. After they were once started, dear me, how those feathers grew! It seemed no time at all before they covered up the ear-holes in the side of his head, and no time at all before a little bristle fringe grew down over the nose-holes in his ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch

... the great travelers of the world. In India there are two American tourists for one of all other nationalities. The hotel registers bristle with U.S.A. addresses and the shops and hotels regard the American trade as being the most profitable. One desirable result of the American tendency to fare afield has been the steady improvement in hotel and railway ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... seas, that he was unable as yet to emulate; from vast modern machineries and facilities whose acquaintance he had still to make, but as to which it was part of the interest of his situation as it stood that he could, quite without wincing, feel his future likely to bristle with them. ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... concerned, and Salome did not demand John the Baptist's head on a salver with greater gusto than the autocrat of Fairholme would insist on Dale's dismissal when he discovered the facts. Talk of the horned dilemma—here was an unfortunate asked to choose which bristle of a porcupine he ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... confronted with difficulties throughout the whole course of English poetry: there is hardly a page of that brilliant, learned, instructive, invaluable piece of wrong-headedness, Dr Guest's English Rhythms, which does not bristle with them. But at no time are these difficulties so great as during our present period, and especially at the close of it. Let any man who has no "prize to fight," no thesis to defend, take any characteristic piece of Anglo-Saxon poetry and "Alison," place ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... no other back-bone all the while we had her. But the sapling grew up into such a tall tree, that I climbed right up to heaven by it, and when I got there, I saw the Virgin Mary sitting and spinning the foam of the sea into pig's-bristle ropes; but just then the spruce-fir broke short off, and I couldn't get down again; so the Virgin Mary let me down by one of the ropes, and down I slipped straight into a fox's hole, and who should sit there but my mother and your father cobbling ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... commanded her to," said this Petruchio, beginning to bristle at once; and he straightway told me another story about a man who threw his lady-love's dog into a pond, not because the dog needed a bath, but in assertion of his authority. The lady had wished to keep her dog ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... the Elder a bit, for he shook his head and said, "No nonsense now, you Si"; and then, as he thought it over, he began to bristle and swell up; and when he stood it was to his full six feet four, and it was all man. You could see that he was boss of himself again, and when a man like old Doc Hoover is boss of himself he comes pretty ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... heat of June but with the weight of Invisibles who come to lounge in the chairs; Peshawur possesses houses that none will willingly rent; and there is something—not fever—wrong with a big bungalow in Allahabad. The older Provinces simply bristle with haunted houses, and march phantom ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... now, don't bristle up!' said Nikita, pressing down into the sledge the freshly threshed oat straw the cook's husband had brought. 'And now let's spread the sacking like this, and the drugget over it. There, like that it will be comfortable sitting,' he went on, suiting the action to the words and tucking the drugget ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy

... the one thing calculated to rouse Red Gilbat. He seemed to flare, to bristle, and ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey

... face looks down immovably on the comings and goings below. The Guard-room has a few stands of glittering arms and one or two women's portraits; altogether a different Guard-room from what it must have been when it received its name. Beyond is the Armoury, where arms bristle in sheaves and piles, surmounted by hauberks and casques, smooth and polished as if they had never been dinted in battle or rusted with blood. Queen Anne's Drawing-room, spacious and stately, is resplendent in ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... strange land bristle with peaks and needles of stone, that the views we ourselves obtained —though perhaps from a lower elevation, and certainly without the risk—scarcely yielded either in extent or picturesque grandeur to the scene described by ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... for Mr. Rockharrt was looking at him with bent brows, staring eyes, and bristling iron gray hair and beard, or hair and beard that seemed to bristle. ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... to come in," said Hauteville, and a moment later Coquenil's fat, red-haired rival entered with a smile that made his short mustache fairly bristle in triumph. ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett

... of 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 hollow hill, with his right, ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... elbow gazing up through the green tracery of the bushes at the sky. It was a wonderful sky, a deep, soft, velvet blue, and it tinted the woods with glorious and kindly hues. It seemed strange to Robert, at the moment, that a forest so beautiful should bristle with danger, but he knew it too well to allow its softness and air of innocence ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler

... of a drum, it is necessary to constantly measure its rate of rotation. This is effected by causing a tuning-fork of known rate of vibration to be maintained in vibration electrically. A fine point or bristle attached to one of its arms, marks a sinuous line upon the smoked surface of the cylinder. This gives the basis for most accurately determining the smallest intervals. Each wave drawn by the fork corresponds to a known fraction ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... and, leaving him gloating, he hurried away down the trail. Old Bunk was right, they had come there to get him, and there was no use playing into their hands; yet at thought of Slogger Meacham his hair began to bristle and he muttered half-formed threats. The Slogger had come to get him—and Dave Chatwourth was behind there, too—the whole district was dominated by their gang; but the times would change and with inrush of other ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... once sweet temper was a trifle soured, and, with a few exceptions, he had lost his faith in mankind. Before, he had been the most benevolent and hospitable of dogs; now, he eyed all strangers suspiciously, and the sight of a shabby man made him growl and bristle up, as if the memory of his wrongs still burned hotly ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... 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 ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... not ornament our girdles with pistols, yataghans, &c., such as some pilgrims appeared to bristle all over with; and as a lesson to such rash people, a story may be told which was narrated to us at Jerusalem, and carries a wholesome moral. The Honourable Hoggin Armer, who was lately travelling ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... What bristled between? English strongholds. What are they now? French ones—and they never cost a blow!" Here applause broke out from the group of generals, and Joan had to pause a moment to let it subside. "Yes, English strongholds bristled before us; now French ones bristle behind us. What is the argument? A child can read it. The strongholds between us and Paris are garrisoned by no new breed of English, but by the same breed as those others—with the same fears, the same questionings, the same weaknesses, the same disposition to see the heavy ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain

... that's made Crayford bristle like a scrubbing brush. The Metropolitan's changed the date for the production of Sennier's new opera, put it forward by nearly a fortnight, pledged themselves to be ready by ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens

... might have been empty, so profound was the silence. The hissing of a kettle upon the stove rose sharp and strident to the ear. Seven white faces, all turned upward to this man who dominated them, were set motionless with utter terror. Then, with a sudden shivering of glass, a bristle of glistening rifle barrels broke through each window, while the curtains were torn ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... the remnant of cloth left to him, thinking of his legs, but at last discarded it as useless, and hid it among the bushes. Then, laboriously, he trimmed his mustache and beard. It was low work without light or mirror, but he persevered until to the touch of his fingers the merest bristle remained, a stubble such as a man would have who had gone a few days without shaving. Then, satisfied that under cover of the darkness he might pass in a crowd of people unnoticed, he slipped the scissors into the coat of his sleeping suit ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... The silent battle he fought against death had left its mark. His square, jutting jaw now seemed all bone, as did his long nose and high cheekbones. They were prominent landmarks rising from the limp greyness of his skin. Only the erect bristle of his close-cropped hair was unchanged. He had the appearance of having suffered a long and ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... would have been easier to look at the sun. They passed over the forest, and, just as they were descending at the palace steps, one of the horse's hoofs lightly touched the top of a tree, which put the whole woods in motion. The wild animals began to howl till it was enough to make one's hair bristle. They hastily alighted, and if the mistress of the palace had not been outside feeding her chickens (for that is what she called the wild beasts), they would certainly have been killed. She spared their ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various

... the mustang groaned. Sheriff Kern came suddenly into clear view around the last turn and rode quickly up to them, a very short man, muscular, sweaty. He always gave the impression that he had been working ceaselessly for a week, and certainly he found time to shave only once in ten days. Dense bristle clouded the lower features of his face. He was a taciturn man. His greetings took the form of a single grunt. He took possession of John Gaspar with a single glance that sent the latter nervously toward ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand

... Bubbles's hair began to bristle. "Say," he cried in his excitement, "the straw hats—the soft straw hats that Blizzard makes and don't sell—they're ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... purple, with a yellow center; a Western variety, white; usually several buds at the end of stem, between 2 erect unequal bracts; about 1/2 in. across; perianth of 6 spreading divisions, each pointed with a bristle from a notch; stamens 3, the filaments united to above the middle; pistil 1, its tip 3-cleft. Stem: 3 to 14 in. tall, pale hoary green, flat, rigid, 2-edged. Leaves: Grass-like, pale, rigid, mostly from base. Fruit: 3-celled capsule, nearly globose. Preferred Habitat - Moist fields ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan



Words linked to "Bristle" :   stand up, bristle-pointed, burst, brush, abound, fiber, react, respond, bristle up, bristle fern, hare's-foot bristle fern, yellow bristle grass, uprise



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com