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Bristle   Listen
verb
Bristle  v. i.  
1.
To rise or stand erect, like bristles. "His hair did bristle upon his head."
2.
To appear as if covered with bristles; to have standing, thick and erect, like bristles. "The hill of La Haye Sainte bristling with ten thousand bayonets." "Ports bristling with thousands of masts."
3.
To show defiance or indignation.
To bristle up, to show anger or defiance.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bristle" Quotes from Famous Books



... or out for a walk. More than contented, therefore, while busily his father wedded welt and sole with stitches infrangible, Gibbie sat on the floor, preparing waxed ends, carefully sticking in the hog's bristle, and rolling the combination, with quite professional aptitude, between the flat of his hand and what of trouser-leg he had left, gazing eagerly between at the advancing masterpiece. Occasionally the triumph of expectation would exceed his control, when he ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... at by a parcel of clerks!" exclaimed Miss Blake, in a tone which really caused my hair to bristle. "Well-mannered, decent young fellows in their own rank, no doubt, but not fit to look at my sister's child. Now, now, Mr. Craven, ought Kathleen Blake's—or, rather, Kathleen Elmsdale's daughter to serve as a fifth of November guy ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... I; for I took a spruce sapling, and put it into her for a backbone, and she had no other backbone all the while we had her. But the sapling grew up into such a tall tree, that I climbed right up to the sky by it, and when I got there I saw a lady sitting and spinning the foam of the sea into pigs'-bristle ropes; but just then the spruce-fir broke short off, and I couldn't get down again; so the lady 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 shoes; and just ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten

... Laughing Brook and had no luck at all. There are just two things that make hair rise—anger and fear. Anger sometimes makes the hair on the back and neck of Bowser the Hound and of some other little people bristle and stand up, and you know the hair on the tail of Black Pussy stands on end until her tail looks twice as big as it really is. Both anger and fear make it do that. But there is only one thing that can make the hair on the head of Farmer Brown's boy rise, and as it isn't anger, of course ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess

... Behold yon sombre den, Where brambles bristle like the locks Of wool between the horns of scapegoat ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... paused, while he felt the hair on his neck rise and bristle and a chill race up his spine. His heart fluttered, then pounded onward till the blood thumped audibly at his ear-drums and he found himself swaying in rhythm to its beat. The muscles of his back cringed and rippled at the proximity ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... cautioned gruffly in an unknown tongue and told to "imshi!" It isn't a bad plan to "imshi" rather quickly when a Sikh platoon suggests your doing it. I left them standing all alone, with nothing but the empty night to bristle at. ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... mention of the French teacher's name Professor Garlach seemed to bristle up. There was always more or less ill feeling between them on account of their nationalities, but of late ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young

... understand it, and it might be better that you should not know," Richter answered. Then he paused and his manner, which had been friendly and sympathetic, changed. His short hair seemed to bristle and his eyes sparkled under his shaggy brows as he resumed: "Herr Kenwardine was forced to go at the moment he was needed most. Your father, fraeulein, is a bold and clever man, but he was beaten by a blundering ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss

... the stick with him, and very soon he was again in the witch's courtyard. There he emptied out the malt, and next moment came the boar, which had every second bristle of gold and of silver. Esben at once put it into his sack and hurried off before the witch should catch sight of him; but the next moment she came running, and shouted after him, ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... 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 ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... 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

... 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 right glove, and ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... however, bound direct for a thunder-cloud passing overhead; and when it has arrived at the object of its visit, the flier ties a key to the end of his string, and then fastens it with some silk to a post. By and by he sees some loose threads of the hempen-string bristle out and stand up, as if they had been charged with electricity. He instantly applies his knuckle to the key, and as he draws from it the electrical spark, this strange little boy is struck through the very heart with an agony of joy. His labouring chest relieves itself ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers

... a monster do I see now,[594] Coming hitherward with an armed brow! What is it? ah, it is a sow! No, by God's body, it is but a gristle, And on the back it hath never a bristle. It is not a cow—ah, there I fail: For then it should have a long tail. What the devil, I was blind! it is but a snail: I was never so afraid in east nor in south; My heart at the first sight was at my mouth. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley

... tell no boy, nohow. No, sah. 'Taint dis nigger would go tell a boy dat Mistah Hamlin he have a riot with Mistah Cap'n Falk, no sah. Ah ain't gwine tell no boy dat Mistah Hamlin, he say dat Mistah Cap'n Falk he ain't holdin' to de right co'se, no, sah; nor dat Mistah Cap'n Falk he bristle up like a guinea gander and he say, while he's swearin' most amazin', dat he know what co'se he's sailin', no, sah. Ah ain't gwine tell no boy dat Mistah Hamlin, he say he am supercargo, an' dat he reckon he got orders f'om ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... wonderful secrets in Saserna, all equally foreign to agriculture, and so all to be left where they are. But it must be admitted that such digressions are found in many other authors. Does not the agricultural treatise of the great Cato himself fairly bristle with them, as for instance his instructions how to make must cake and cheese cake, and ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... ol'er dan he be, an' I'se up wid de sun an' I ony wish I could set when de sun sets. 'Pears like he orter tote some ob de tings ez well ez his slip ob a grandaughter," and old Tobe's wool seemed fairly to bristle with indignation ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... then the Parade is such a modest little affair. The town itself is flung down a steep hill, at the mouth of a verdurous gorge; and lies pitched so far as the very waterside, a picturesque jumble of wall and roof. Its banked edges bristle and stand up in the bight of a vaster bay, with a crooked breakwater, like a bent finger, beckoning passing sails to its harbourage—an invitation which most are coy of accepting. For the attractions of King's Cobb are—comparatively—limited, ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... wheel! Let the front rank kneel! With the bristle of the steel To the foe. Till their regiments reel, At our rattling peal, And the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various

... wake up 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 near being boss of every one around him. He sent word ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... 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 then a lovely pompadour, having ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston

... the proper bounds. Then Shere Khan would flatter them and wonder that such fine young hunters were content to be led by a dying wolf and a man's cub. "They tell me," Shere Khan would say, "that at Council ye dare not look him between the eyes." And the young wolves would growl and bristle. ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... the most conspicuous part of the head (Fig. 39). In front, between the eyes, are the three-jointed antennae, the last joint bearing a short, feathery bristle. From the under side of the head arises the long, fleshy proboscis (Fig. 40). When this is fully extended it is somewhat longer than the head; when not distended and in use it is doubled back in the cavity on the ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane

... 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 white ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... Nestor's 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 ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... light of eyes that very day. Besides, though far from unprejudiced, he had a horror of prejudice, and the moment he suspected a prejudice, hunted it almost as uncompromisingly in himself as in another: most people surmising a fault in themselves rouse every individual bristle of their nature to defend and retain the thing that degrades them! He therefore speedily overcame his first reluctance, and agreed to his daughter's strange proposal. He was willing to make as much of an attempt towards ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... the thickets in their path. Where the strangers were afraid of tearing their garments, these unprotected savages had no care whatever for their skins. It is true that their ingenuity in gliding through the labyrinth resembled magic. However the forest might bristle with undergrowth, they never thought of breaking down obstacles or of cutting them, as the equally practiced Bolivians did, with a knife. They contented themselves with putting aside with one hand the tufts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... 25 cm. high, 3.5 to 7.5 cm. in diameter, simple or rarely branching at base: tubercles ovate-cylindrical, 8 to 14 mm. long, with axillary bristle-bearing wool, at length naked: radial spines 30 to 60, in two series, the exterior bristle-like, shorter and white, the interior stouter, longer and dusky-tipped or purplish; central spines 3 or 4, stouter, longer, brown or blackish ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter

... couch, with the air of a woman about to chat confidentially from the softness of many gay pillows, dropping into the attitude of tranquil relaxation that may yet bristle with eager mental quills. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... dismal night when the step on the Ghost's Walk (inaudible here, however) might be the step of a deceased cousin shut out in the cold. It is near bed-time. Bedroom fires blaze brightly all over the house, raising ghosts of grim furniture on wall and ceiling. Bedroom candlesticks bristle on the distant table by the door, and cousins yawn on ottomans. Cousins at the piano, cousins at the soda-water tray, cousins rising from the card-table, cousins gathered round the fire. Standing on one side of his own peculiar fire (for ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... Natalya had imagined beforehand that for a matronly daughter of twenty-three, almost past the marrying age, any wedding would be a profitable transaction. But when a husband actually presented himself, all the old dealer's critical maternity was set a-bristle. Henry Elkman, she insisted, had not a true Jewish air. There was in the very cut of his clothes a subtle suggestion of going ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... He had never been one to pick a fight or take up a challenge. What was there about Shannon that prodded Drew this way? He'd met the gamecock breed before and had never known the need to bristle at their crowing. Now he was disturbed that ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... even meaner. He came into Ernest's room one morning while he was shaving and gravely pretending to pick up a hog's stiff bristle from the carpet, held ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... poor-rates, tithes, and the expense of the mounted yeomanry. Thurlow compared the country magnates to sheep who let themselves be shorn and re-shorn, whereas merchants and traders were like hogs, grunting and bolting as soon as one bristle was touched. In defence of Pitt's action, it may be said that he hoped to secure a considerable gain by the investment of the purchase money in Consols and to enhance their value; but it appears that not more than L80,000 ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... "You bristle with your own guns," he pursued, "but the ingenuity of a lifetime shall be devoted to my taking you on some quarter on ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... 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 flattened, and on this part five most minute cups are placed which ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... perceptibly. Her lips looked suddenly thin and determined. Even the soft little curls above her ears seemed actually to bristle with resolution. ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter

... sounded somewhere around Haney's knees. Joe looked down, startled. The midget he'd seen up on the Platform nodded up at him. He'd squirmed through the press in Haney's wake. He seemed to bristle a little out of pure habit. Joe made ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... Norandine 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, he ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... comb and towel, by the aid of which the girl effects her escape, constantly figure in Skazkas of this class, and always produce the required effect. A brush, also, is frequently introduced, from each bristle of which springs up a wood. In one story, however, the brush gives rise to mountains, and a golik, or bath-room whisk, turns into a forest. The towel is used, also, for the purpose of constructing or annihilating a bridge. Similar instruments are found in the ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... the treasure to Hreidmar, and they placed it on the otter skin, which ever stretched and widened, so that, with all that large store, one hair of the bristle remained uncovered. And on this Loki placed the magic ring, that was called 'Andvari's Loom,' because it made much gold, and at last the skin was entirely ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton

... cheers announced the entrance of the presidium, with Lenin-great Lenin-among them. A short, stocky figure, with a big head set down in his shoulders, bald and bulging. Little eyes, a snubbish nose, wide, generous mouth, and heavy chin; clean-shaven now, but already beginning to bristle with the well-known beard of his past and future. Dressed in shabby clothes, his trousers much too long for him. Unimpressive, to be the idol of a mob, loved and revered as perhaps few leaders in history have been. A strange popular leader-a leader purely ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... 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 out ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... excellent hat-rack," said Scott, slinging his revolver and his water-bottle over the little upward-pointing pegs which bristle from the trunk. "As a shade tree, however, it isn't an unqualified success. Curious that in the universal adaptation of means to ends something a little less flimsy could not have ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... and dropped down again on all-fours, the shaggy hair on his neck and shoulders seeming to bristle as he turned toward us. As he sank down on his fore feet, I had raised the rifle; his head was bent slightly down, and when I saw the top of the white bead fairly between his small, glittering, evil eyes, I pulled trigger. Half-rising up, the huge beast fell over on his side in the death throes, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... Reuss and his newly appointed Chief Justice and assessor—who but mine old friend Michael Texel! The Duke bent a searching look on me as I bowed low before him, but he saw only the tan of my skin and the close bristle of my hair. ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... panorama into broad sweeps of gold and black and peacock blue which one may file away in memory, tangled eyries of shining windows swimming in empty air. As seen in the full brilliance of noonday the bristle of detail is too bewildering to carry in one clutch of the senses. The eye is distracted by the abysses between buildings, by the uneven elevation of the summits, by the jumbled compression of the streets. In the vastness of the scene one looks in vain for some guiding principle ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... with a yellow centre; a Western variety, white; usually several buds at the end of the 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, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

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

... spectral sail was spread, That flutter'd to and fro; The hair would bristle on each head, Which awful fear did show. And when the moon-beam seem'd to kiss, That dreaded maiden's brow; Something each knew would go amiss, Nor judg'd ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various

... automobile plant, but she has not so many factories as her strategic position, stated by General Sherman, would seem to justify, or as her own industrial ambitions cause her to desire. For does not every progressive American city yearn to bristle with factory chimneys, even as a summer resort folder bristles with exclamation points? And is not soot a ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... stock-still nor looked at them. His great chin was cocked, and his muzzle wrinkled in a dreadful grin. As he stood there, shivering a little, his eyes rolling back, his breath grating in his throat to set every bristle on end, ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... to bristle. A giant in size, he seemed to grow larger, and his gorgeous hunting suit strained ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler

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

... scope for fortification of the most formidable character, advantages which, as far as construction goes, have been well utilized, massive and lofty stone forts occupying every point of advantage. I believe they are of German construction. They bristle with heavy Krupp and Nordenfeldt guns. The elevation on the coast varies from eighty feet to 410 feet. The land defences, though newer than those seaward, are less powerful; the heaviest guns, of 21 and 24 centimetre, ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan

... And as for painting your rod, which must be in Oyl, you must first make a size with glue and water, boiled together until the glue be dissolved, and the size of a lie colour; then strike your size upon the wood with a bristle brush or pensil, whilst it is hot: that being quite dry, take white lead, and a little red lead, and a little cole black, so much as all together will make an ash colour, grind these all together with Linseed oyle, let it ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton

... his life seen so untidy a woman as this. Her hair had been hastily pinned together in a shapeless lump on the top of her head, and loose ends straggled from it. Her dress was on her ... that was certain ... but how it was on her was more than he could understand. She seemed to bristle with safety-pins!... ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine

... such occasions, he would throw back his head, shut his eyes and roar his wrath at his opponents in a most disquieting manner, and when he returned home, whether he had won or lost his fight, his paper would bristle for two or three weeks with rage, and his editorial page would be full of lurid articles written in short exclamatory sentences, pocked with italics, ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... Down in the blind a big 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 digging ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... heroisms, the utmost triumphs of art, the love—for love it is—that makes you and me care indeed for the fate and welfare of all this round world, was latent in the body of some little lurking beast that crawled and hid among the branches of vanished and forgotten Mesozoic trees? A petty egg-laying, bristle-covered beast it was, with no more of the rudiments of a soul than bare hunger, weak lust and fear.... People always seem to regard that as a curious fact of no practical importance. It isn't: it's a vital fact of the utmost practical ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... Enough, however, of M.B. and his luggage. To come back to your claims upon me. Your return journey, with notes, I read again and again, nor have I done with them yet. You always make something fresh out of a hackneyed theme. Our milestones, you say, bristle with blunders, but I must shortly explain why I cannot comply ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... the hair of my scalp bristle, and a violent shudder thrilled through me as those dreadful cries smote upon my ear, for they seemed to be the utterance of some human being in the very last extremity of both physical and mental anguish, the ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... 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 pride ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... 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 the rising of the Judge. Suddenly his Lordship bowed, and disappeared. I looked ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various

... scale, altogether, of the car of Juggernaut which was a kind of image that 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

... to the window, hoping thereby to make his escape. But the iron bars were too firmly fixed—no matter how hard he pulled, tugged and wrenched, they remained as immovable as ever. Then his heart began to palpitate, his hair to bristle up, and his knees to totter; his thoughts were full of speculations as to how he would be killed and what it would feel like to be eaten alive. His conscience, too, rising up in judgment against him, added its own paroxysms of dismay, paroxysms which ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... sea or fresh water, coated by gelatinous substance; either filiform or a number of filaments being connected together constituting gelatinous, definitely formed, or shapeless fronds or masses. Filaments jointed, bearing bristle-like processes. Fructification: zoospores produced from the cell contents of the filaments; resting spores formed from the contents of particular cells after impregnation by ciliated spermatozoids produced in distinct ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various

... night; and nobody else, except ourselves and Piggy. Poor Piggy, he moves about in more awful awe of my uncle than ever—and so stiff! I am always expecting to see him bristle!" ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... whatever. Burton then set to work in earnest. This was in April, 1884. As we pointed out in Chapter xxii., Lady Burton's account of the inception and progress of the work and Burton's own story in the Translator's Foreword (which precedes his first volume) bristle with misstatements and inaccuracies. He evidently wished it to be thought that his work was well under weigh long before he had heard of Mr. Payne's undertaking, for he says, "At length in the spring of 1879 the tedious process of copying began and the book commenced to take finished form." Yet he ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... am angry, you rise and bristle; when I am pleased, you wag; when I am alarmed, you tuck yourself in out of danger. You are too mercurial—you disclose all my emotions. My notion is that tails are given to conceal thought. It is my dearest ambition to be ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... cry of rage, a flash of white teeth, and a bristle of short neck- hair, he sprang for the black. Lerumie fled down the deck, and Jerry pursued amid the laughter of all the blacks. Several times, in making the circuit of the deck, he managed to scratch ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... engagement! The boy was ridiculous. In what bucolic school of fence he had been taught was beyond imagining. He was downright clownish. "Short work and simple" was my judgment, while his red hair seemed a-bristle with very rage and while he pressed ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... 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 ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory

... 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 we can laugh ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... features showed out plainly. It seemed to me that I had never seen such an utterly fiendish and merciless expression upon a human face. His eyes were dilated and glaring, his lips drawn back so as to show his white fangs, and his straight black hair appeared to bristle over his low forehead like the hood of a cobra. The sudden and noiseless apparition had such an effect upon me that I sprang up in bed trembling in every limb, and held out my hand towards my revolver. I was heartily ashamed of my hastiness when he explained the ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... 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

... tightened their grip upon the rod, his hair and long beard seemed to bristle with furious and delighted excitement. The purple-fringed rim of the Monster had long overshadowed the whited patch of rock; its grinding foot was scarce ten yards away. Oro made more signs to Yva who, beneath the shelter of her shield, ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... do but they must be wrapped up and allowed to go out and examine it while the men rested and had a smoke. Its great horns, its enormous ugly head, and then its coarse, bristle-like hair, had all to be examined and commented upon. The opportune arrival of Souwanas, who had been attracted by the sight of the moose, much pleased the children, and just as soon as the investigation ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young

... undertake to guess. The capture of a brigade, at Hartsville, by John Morgan, has awakened the army into something like life; before it was idly awaiting the rise of the Cumberland, but this bold dash of the rebels has made it bristle up like an angry boar; and this morning, I am told, it starts out to show its tusks to the enemy. Our division has been ordered to be ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... 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 ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... brandished their whips and awaited their victims, while their voices rose, incessant, with a sharp strange sound, a challenge at once fierce and familiar. The whole place, behind the fence, appeared to bristle and resound. Out there was America, Count Otto said to himself, and he looked toward it with a sense that he should have to muster resolution. On the wharf people were rushing about amid their trunks, pulling their things together, trying to unite their scattered ...
— Pandora • Henry James

... bristled upon the grey cub's back, but it bristled silently. How was he to know that this thing that sniffed was a thing at which to bristle? It was not born of any knowledge of his, yet it was the visible expression of the fear that was in him, and for which, in his own life, there was no accounting. But fear was accompanied by another instinct—that of concealment. The cub was in a frenzy of terror, yet he lay without ...
— White Fang • Jack London

... and 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 ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht

... for the out-of-the-way places of the earth when they bristle all over with the quaint and the old and the odd, and are mouldy with the picturesque. But here is an in-the-way place, all sunshine and shimmer, with never a fringe of mould upon it, and yet you lose your heart ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... a funnel-shaped orifice surrounded by a series of fringed processes. The lumen of the tube is narrowest at its inner end, where it opens into the cavity of the uterus by a minute orifice which scarcely admits a bristle; the diameter of the canal gradually increases until it reaches its ovarian extremity. The mucous lining of the tube is clothed by a single layer of hair-like epithelium, whose current sweeps from the ovarian toward the uterine end of the tube; and it is these movements which ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith

... believe 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 ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson

... of 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

... would not take any important action on your own responsibility if you were in doubt whether or not you were right. You feel that his objection is unsound; that he is exaggerating caution. But it would certainly be a mistake for you to say, "Nonsense!" That would make him bristle. ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... not 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, as I am informed by Mr. Busk, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... 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. This action he would repeat until the adder was dead, and Isaac would then put it under ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... more vivid every moment, and when Cinders, infected thereby, began to growl below his breath and to bristle under her hand ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... 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, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... who refuse to bring their grain to market." At Lisieux, agrarian law is preached by Fufour and Momoro. At Douai, other preachers from Paris say to the popular club, "Prepare scaffolds; let the walls of the city bristle with gallows, and hang upon them every man who does not accept our opinions."—Nothing is more logical, more in conformity with their principles. The journals, deducing their consequences, explain to the people the use they ought to make of their reconquered sovereignty.[3206] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... granite jewel which is as light as a bit of lace, covered with towers, with slender belfries to which spiral staircases ascend, and which raise their strange heads that bristle with chimeras, with devils, with fantastic animals, with monstrous flowers, and which are joined together by finely carved arches, to the blue sky by day, and to ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... 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 ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch

... Maria Carara entered. He was smoking his customary corn-husk cigarette, but his dark eyes were grave and his silken mustachios were pointed to the fineness of a bristle. ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach

... Mary's Bothwell. Take it down and look at it. Mark the big head, fit to conceive large schemes; the strong animal face, made to captivate a sensitive, feminine woman; the brutally forceful features—the mouth with a suggestion of wild boars' tusks behind it, the beard which could bristle with fury: the whole man and his life-history are revealed in that picture. I wonder if Scott had ever seen the original which hangs at ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... down a sordid and common passage, ill lit and worse furnished, until he came to a door upon the right, which he threw open. A blaze of yellow light streamed out upon us, and in the centre of the glare there stood a small man with a very high head, a bristle of red hair all round the fringe of it, and a bald, shining scalp which shot out from among it like a mountain-peak from fir-trees. He writhed his hands together as he stood, and his features were in a perpetual jerk, now smiling, now scowling, but never for an instant in repose. Nature had ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... The life, the right, and truth of all this Realme Is fled to heauen: and England now is left To tug and scamble, and to part by th' teeth The vn-owed interest of proud swelling State: Now for the bare-pickt bone of Maiesty, Doth dogged warre bristle his angry crest, And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace: Now Powers from home, and discontents at home Meet in one line: and vast confusion waites As doth a Rauen on a sicke-falne beast, The iminent decay of wrested pompe. Now happy he, whose cloake and center can Hold out this tempest. Beare ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... him with a momentary bristle of enquiry in the gentle brown eyes, and he remembered, just in time, that her husband had once held the reins in Pall Mall for half a year, when, feeling atrophy creeping on, he resigned office ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... hen sensing the approach of some utterly unseen danger the Superintendent seemed to bristle suddenly ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... boxes were full 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 ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... been stated that Mr. Williams was not imaginative. But a few years of life in climates alien and intemperate had disordered his nerves. There was that in the rhythms of the hymn which made bristle his flesh. ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm

... had displayed in turning out a well-dressed clergyman of the Church of England. His hair was ever brushed with scrupulous attention, and showed in its regular waves the guardian care of each separate bristle. And all this was done with that ease and grace which should be the characteristics of a dignitary of the established ...
— The Relics of General Chasse • Anthony Trollope

... not take my eyes off the man in the bed. His shirt was hanging open, and his emaciated chest, covered with yellow bristle, rose and fell horribly. He began to cough. Peter shuffled to his feet, caught up the tea-kettle and mixed him some hot water and whiskey. The sharp smell of spirits went through ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... 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 ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... small 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

... Father in the new community of love, which is being born. Sir Edward Burne-Jones once wrote: "That was an awful word of Ruskin's, that artists paint God for the world. There's a lump of greasy pigment at the end of Michael Angelo's hog-bristle brush, and by the time it has been laid on the stucco, there is something there, that all men with eyes recognize as Divine. Think what it means: it is the power of bringing God into the world—making God manifest!" ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin

... spoke, his face grew pale, his hair seemed to bristle, his tall and proud form trembled visibly, and presently he sunk down on a seat, and covered his face with ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... rate, the Ancient and Hopeful assumes more mystery and importance than ever as he uncovers a second tin casket with a glass front. Glued to the glass, inside, is a single coarse yellow hair about two inches long; the precious relic, which has a suspicious resemblance to a bristle, is considered the gem of the collection, being nothing less than a hair from the Prophet's venerable mustache. Mohammedans swear by the beard of the Prophet, just as good Christians swear by "the great horned spoon," or by "great Caesar's ghost," so ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... 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 smiling ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... Anu. Aruru washed her hands, took a bit of clay, cast it upon the earth, kneaded it and created Babani, the warrior, the exalted scion, the man of Ninib, whose whole body is covered with hair, whose tresses are as long as those of a woman; the locks of his hair bristle on his head like those on the corn-god; he is clad in a vestment like that of the god of the fields; he browses with the gazelles, he quenches his thirst with the beasts of the field, he sports with the beasts of the waters." ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... square mile down 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 ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... 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 pouches which we carried. The sentries were far from satisfied. We ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green

... the rails. It began as a low, weird moan, which rose rapidly to a sort of sobbing wail and culminated in a sharp, unearthly scream that sent cold shivers running down my spine and caused the hairs of my head to bristle upon my scalp. It seemed to come from the water almost immediately under our bows. I saw a little crowd of men spring up the ladder leading to the topgallant forecastle, rush to the rail, and peer eagerly down into the black water. Then one of them ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... would learn to evade these pitfalls, with which their future seemed to bristle, but as yet he was so unused to avoiding things in his path that it was almost a miracle that she had, as she put it with a half-whimsical, half-despairing smile, got him safely home ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... Roxy's martial enthusiasm, 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 a ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... decide a tie. 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

... done by several seemingly great and wise men, who with a new-fashioned modesty employ some paltry orator or scribbling poet, whom they bribe to flatter them with some high-flown character, that shall consist of mere lies and shams; and yet the persons thus extolled shall bristle up, and, peacock-like, bespread their plumes, while the impudent parasite magnifies the poor wretch to the skies, and proposes him as a complete pattern of all virtues, from each of which he is yet as far distant as heaven itself from hell: what ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... indicative of the utmost horror. She was deadly pale. Her hands, sodden with soapsuds, hung twitching at her sides in the folds of her calico gown; her very hair, which was light and sparse, seemed to bristle with fear. All the Townsends turned and looked at her. David and George rose with ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

... had Mr. Pellew gone back to his chair, instead of sitting down again beside her on the sofa. It was her own fault perhaps, because she could not have sworn this time that she had not seemed to make room. That unhappy sex—the female one—lives under orders to bristle with incessant safeguards against misinterpretation. Heaven only knows—or should we not rather say, Hell only knows?—what latitudes have claimed "encouragement" as their excuse! That lady in Browning's poem never should ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... Bygrave's youth and beauty, and Mr. Bygrave's ready wit. I could only hope to attack your infatuation with proofs, and at that time I had not got them. I have got them now! I am armed at all points with proofs; I bristle from head to foot with proofs; I break my forced silence, and speak with the emphasis of my proofs. Do ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... The day would come when machinery would destroy the 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 said with a ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... blue eyes and a pink and white complexion; that is, it was usually pink and white, though this morning his face was flushed and red. His eyes had a glint in them not usually apparent and his mouth was drawn down at the corners into a scowl. His hair, close-cropped, seemed to bristle more than was its wont; in fact his usual mild-mannered appearance had given way to one ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene

... quivering with the drama of the moment, saw that most inspiriting of sights—the "break" of a salmon-trout. Up he went, from a brusque explosion of ripples and foam—up into the gray of the morning from out the gray of the water: scales all gleaming, hackles all a-bristle; a sudden flash of silver, a sweep as of a scimitar in gray smoke, with a splash, a turmoil, an abrupt burst of troubled sound that stabbed through the silence of the morning, and in a single instant dissipated all the placid calm of ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... Liberals at Oxford are likely to side with Ward against the Heads. I do not see what else they can do; and I devoutly hope that the tangle will be irremovable except by abolishing subscriptions. Price of Rugby is all in a bristle about it. I much admire his spirit. Baden Powell protests in ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... the circular spot on lower, larger. It is about the same size, and has the body ringed with black and yellow; the legs are brown; the femora on underside fringed with whitish hairs, simply pectinated; many of the pectinations of the antennae end in a bristle-like hair; palpi ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... with, he has to carry all his goods and chattels on his person. The infantryman has his pack and equipment, a wonderful assortment of articles that bristle out from him like the quills on a porcupine, and which he generally describes as "The Christmas Tree"; with which, too, he can do most things, from preparing a meal for ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett

... 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 ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... Orchis pyramidalis, and it almost equals, perhaps even beats, your Listera case; the sticky glands are congenitally united into a saddle-shaped organ, which has great power of movement, and seizes hold of a bristle (or proboscis) in an admirable manner, and then another movement takes place in the pollen masses, by which they are beautifully adapted to leave pollen on the two LATERAL stigmatic surfaces. I ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin



Words linked to "Bristle" :   react, bristle-pointed, bristly, fibre, feature, hare's-foot bristle fern, bristle at, respond, burst, bristle fern, abound, stand up, have, yellow bristle grass, brush, bristle up



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