bristle

English

Etymology

From Middle English bristil, bristel, brustel, from Old English bristl, *brystl, *byrstel, from Proto-West Germanic *burstilu, diminutive of Proto-West Germanic *bursti, from Proto-Germanic *burstiz (compare Dutch borstel, German Borste (“boar's bristle”), Icelandic burst), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰr̥stís (compare Middle Irish brostaid (“to goad, spur”), Latin fastīgium (“top”), Polish barszcz (“hogweed”)), equivalent to brust +‎ -le.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbɹɪsəl/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• (dated, rural folk speech of New England and Upstate New York) IPA^(key): /ˈbɹʌsəl/
• (dated, Southern US rural folk speech) IPA^(key): /ˈbɹɪstəl/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪsəl

Noun

bristle (plural bristles)

1. A stiff or coarse hair, usually and especially on a nonhuman mammal.

   the bristles of a pig

2. A chaeta: an analogous filament on arthropods, annelids, or other animals.
3. The hairs or other filaments that make up a brush, broom, or similar item, typically made from plant cellulose, animal hairs, or synthetic polymers.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

bristle (third-person singular simple present bristles, present participle bristling, simple past and past participle bristled)

1. To rise or stand erect, like bristles.
   • 1805, Walter Scott, “(please specify the page)”, in The Lay of the Last Minstrel: A Poem, London: [James Ballantyne] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, , and A Constable and Co., , →OCLC:

     His hair did bristle upon his head.

   • 1929, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Disintegration Machine‎:

     He sat down with his elbows upon the desk, his gorilla hands clasped together, his beard bristling forward, and his big grey eyes, half-covered by his drooping lids, fixed benignly upon me.

2. To abound, to have an abundance of something, especially something jutting out.
   • 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 5, in Vanity Fair , London: Bradbury and Evans , published 1848, →OCLC:

     the hill of La Haye Sainte bristling with ten thousand bayonets

   • 1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter 2, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volumes (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC:

     ports bristling with thousands of masts

   • 2020 August 1, David Hytner, “Aubameyang at the double as Arsenal turn tables on Chelsea to win FA Cup”, in The Guardian‎:

     Kieran Tierney did not want to risk a challenge on Pulisic, who darted on to the ball with far greater purpose, and the dink over Emi Martínez bristled with composure.

3. (with at) To be on one's guard or raise one's defenses; to react with fear, suspicion, or distance.

   The employees bristled at the prospect of working through the holidays.

   • c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     Now for the bare-picked bone of majesty / Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest.

   • 2013 June 22, “Engineers of a different kind”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 70:

     Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers. Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets is only a small part of what leveraged buy-outs are about, they insist. Improving the workings of the businesses they take over is just as core to their calling, if not more so. Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster.

   • 2021 May 5, Barry Doe, “The Independent has a better grasp than GWR's spokesman”, in RAIL, number 930, page 58:

     If only the industry could be honest and explain why it has been forced, owing to government policies, to increase fares over the quarter century since privatisation. Instead, it is defensive and clearly bristles with annoyance when someone merely states the facts.

4. To fix a bristle to.

   to bristle a thread

Derived terms

• bristling

Translations

References

• “bristle”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Anagrams

• Bitlers, Liberts, blister, reblits, riblets