bristle

From Middle English bristil, brustel, diminutive of brust, from Old English byrst, 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.

• IPA^(key): /ˈbɹɪs.l̩/
• (dated, rural folk speech of New England and Upstate New York) IPA^(key): /ˈbɹʌs.l̩/[1]
• Rhymes: -ɪsəl

bristle (plural bristles)

1. A stiff or coarse hair.

   the bristles of a pig

2. The hair or straws that make up a brush, broom, or similar item.

• bristlet

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

1. To rise or stand erect, like bristles.
   • Sir Walter Scott

     His hair did bristle upon his head.

2. To appear as if covered with bristles; to have standing, thick and erect, like bristles.
   • Thackeray

     the hill of La Haye Sainte bristling with ten thousand bayonets

   • Macaulay

     ports bristling with thousands of masts

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

     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.

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

4. To fix a bristle to.

   to bristle a thread

• bristling

• Bitlers, Liberts, blister, reblits, riblets