bristly

1. 1.

   very irritable

   “bristly exchanges between the White House and the press”

   “he became prickly and spiteful”

   “witty and waspish about his colleagues”

   Synonymspricklyspleneticwaspish

   Similarill-natured
2. 2.

   having or covered with protective barbs or quills or spines or thorns or setae etc.

   “a horse with a short bristly mane”

   “bristly shrubs”

   “burred fruits”

   “setaceous whiskers”

   Synonymsbarbedbarbellatebriarybrierybristledburredburrypricklysetosesetaceousspinythorny

   Similararmed

Other forms of bristly

comparative

bristlier·

superlative

bristliest·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about bristly

What does bristly mean?

bristly means "very irritable". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in bristly?

bristly has 2 syllables: brist-ly. The stress falls on "brist".

What is another word for bristly?

Close synonyms include prickly, splenetic, waspish, barbed, barbellate. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is bristly a common word?

bristly is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.