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Glite Dictionary
😠 To react angrily 🪥 A stiff hair 🌆 To be full 🌵 To be covered 🐈 To stand up
to bristle

to bristle

4 4.6
To have many short stiff hairs or spines
  • verb
  • /ˈbrɪsəl/
translation icon : cubrirse de
  • Artus noted with awe that the ape's back was covered with bristling spines.

Examples

  • The books bristled with slips of paper marking ideas she meant to discuss with the Nicholsons.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • If she had fallen, she'd have landed on top of a tumble of fallen timbers bristling with rusty nails.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • "The hair on my arms bristled, though the room was warm."

    Fiction book (1998)

  • Her skin was mottled red here and there and lightly bristled with hair.

    Fiction book (1994)

  • The tiny hairs that run down my stomach and vanish into my shorts bristle against her flat, brown stomach.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • Today, Mrs. Estes had on an orange cap that bristled up like a rooster's comb.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • The craft bristled with so many spears that it resembled the back of a porcupine.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • The ships around her bristled with antennae, but no such unsightly extrusions marred her perfection.

    Fiction book (1991)

  • The Sharer insect veered back down the tunnel, whose ceiling bristled with dog-tooth calcite crystals as big as Rod's thumb.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • The dog was bristling with excitement as it prepared to play with its favorite toy.

Phrasal Verbs

to bristle at
8 7.4

Show sudden anger or annoyance because of something someone says

to bristle up
7.9

Show sudden anger, often by becoming tense in the face or voice

Compounds

bristle brush
  • Specialized
1 3.7

A brush with short, stiff hairs for cleaning or painting rough surfaces

bristle fern
  • Specialized
9.9

A small fern with thin, often almost clear leaves that grows on trees or mossy banks

bristle grass
8.9

A grass that has curved flower spikes and long stiff hairs under each small flower

hare's-foot bristle fern
  • Specialized
9.9

A fern with soft, hairy creeping stems that look like a rabbit's foot

yellow bristle grass
8.4

A common weed grass with yellow, rough, stiff seed heads

Surface Forms

bristle infinitive
bristled past
bristled past participle
bristling present participle
bristles third person singular

Etymology

The verb bristle comes from the same old word for 'stiff hair', so it originally meant 'to be covered with short, stiff hairs'. So to bristle can mean that an object or surface is thickly covered with hair-like things, just like a brush full of bristles.