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say it: PRI-klee
prickly is an adjective meaning "very irritable". It carries 2 recorded senses.
very irritable
“bristly exchanges between the White House and the press”
“he became prickly and spiteful”
“witty and waspish about his colleagues”
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”
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.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for prickly come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.