brindle

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brindle

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Back-formation from brindled, a variant of brinded (“streaked, spotted”), apparently reanalyzed as brindle + -ed. Attested from the late seventeenth century.

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brindle (usually uncountable, plural brindles)

1. A streaky colouration in animals.
2. An animal so coloured.
   • 2011, Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones, Bloomsbury (2017), page 235:

     I snatch at the puppy closest to me, the brindle, which is limp in my hand, and shove it down my shirt.

brindle (comparative more brindle, superlative most brindle)

1. Having such a colouration; brindled.
   • 2011, Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones, Bloomsbury (2017), page 18:

     It is brindle. Stripes of black and brown ride its ribs like a zebra’s.

• tabby (in cats)

• shit-brindle

brindle (third-person singular simple present brindles, present participle brindling, simple past and past participle brindled)

1. To form streaks of a different color.
   • 1841, The Metropolitan - Volume 30, page 226:

     Sorely too as I laboured and toiled, the reward of toil would not come ; already my back began to curve, and my hair to brindle itself with gray, yet I saw no luck before me.

   • 1925, D.H. Lawrence, Reflections on the Death of Porcupine and Other Essays:

     It is the perfect opposition of dark and light that brindles the tiger with gold flame and dark flame.

   • 1993, Peter Warner, Perfect Cats, page 78:

     The darkest areas (the points) may brindle or become bleached by brilliant sunlight, especially in chocolate and white points.

• Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.
• “brindle”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.

• blinder