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Bristly

adjective
1.
Very irritable.  Synonyms: prickly, splenetic, waspish.  "He became prickly and spiteful" , "Witty and waspish about his colleagues"
2.
Having or covered with protective barbs or quills or spines or thorns or setae etc..  Synonyms: barbed, barbellate, briary, briery, bristled, burred, burry, prickly, setaceous, setose, spiny, thorny.  "Bristly shrubs" , "Burred fruits" , "Setaceous whiskers"



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"Bristly" Quotes from Famous Books



... answer, but proceeded to divest himself of his rusty outside coat, and to rub up his stiff, grizzled, bristly, uncombed hair with both his hands, as was his wont when he was not quite satisfied ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... tuft of bristly hair under my arm. The mongoose had followed our footsteps and rejoined us. I heard the quick panting of the brave little creature becoming gradually ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... consider anyone who attempted to have intercourse with a youth of twenty years to be the slave of unnatural lust. The limbs of such, like those of a man, are hard and coarse; their chins, formerly so smooth, are rough and bristly, and their well-grown thighs are disfigured with hairs. As for their other parts, I leave those of you who have experience to decide. On the other hand, a woman's charms are always enhanced by an attractive complexion, flowing locks, dark as hyacinths, stream down her ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... The bristly eyebrows straightened down to a level line over the small blue eyes, and unpleasant furrows drew themselves around the corners of his mouth. "YOU forget," he said, "that if you enter upon these duties you are in the military service and subject to your superior officers. You forget the necessity ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... in her turn, stepped into the sunlight. She wore a cap, whose strings, carelessly tossed over her shoulders, flapped round her head like the wings of a butterfly. A golden powder seemed to fall on her bristly black hair and her kindly face with its flat nose and thick lips. And for Jeanne there were only these two in the room—the little soldier and the servant girl, standing elbow to elbow under the ray of ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... simple examination of his tobacco-spluichdan, for the dead skins of those beings are never the same for four-and-twenty hours together. Sometimes the spluichdan will erect its bristles almost perpendicularly, while, at other times, it reclines them even down; one time it resembles a bristly sow, at another time a sleekit cat; and what dead skin, except itself, could perform such cantrips? Now, it happened one day, as this notable fisher had returned from the prosecution of his calling, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... her potent hand She bore the virtue of the magic wand. Then, hastening to the sties, set wide the door, Urged forth, and drove the bristly herd before; Unwieldy, out they rush'd with general cry, Enormous beasts, dishonest to the eye. Now touch'd by counter-charms they change again, And stand majestic, and recall'd to men. Those hairs of late that bristled every part, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... very long, and extends into a short proboscis; but there is no finger at the end of it like that of the elephant. Its colour is a deep brownish black, its tough hide is covered with a thin sprinkling of strong hairs, and its mane is thick and bristly. So thick is its hide that a bullet can scarcely penetrate it; and it can crush its way through thickets and bushes, however dense, without receiving a scratch. Although a very terrific animal to look at, it is fortunately of a very peaceable and timid ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne

... hark! How it rings, and how the fierce dogs bark! Shouts from out a thousand barrels whizz; Eager steeds are neighing for the wood,— Soon the bristly boar rolls in his blood,— Yours ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... Crop.—"Broccoli should not be allowed to remain till the compactness of the head is broken, but should always be cut while the 'curd,' as the flowering mass is termed, is entire, or before bristly, leafy points make their appearance through it. In trimming the head, a portion of the stalk is left, and a few of the leaves immediately surrounding the head; the extremities being cut off a little below the top ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... increase by Peter Schlemihl strides. Besides, his regular teacher was something like a wild boar. He had proceeded to dragoon Gard as if he were a lad. And Herr Keller's person was offensive. He exhaled a smell unpleasant if scholastic. Dressed in a soiled, shiny, black garb, and with a bristly mustache and beard which often showed egg of a morning, he talked blatantly of having been in Paris as a soldier in '70. It was his one ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... in friendship and purpose as few people are (though she abated never a whit her love for her dear, fierce, blue-eyed, bristly-moustached, battle-scarred, bullying husband) prepared for Vivie's return in the autumn of 1909 by securing for her occupancy a nice little one-storeyed house in a Kensington back street; one of those houses—I doubt not, now tenanted by millionaires who don't want a large household, just a roof ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... reached down to rub the wound, but quickly yanked his hand up again. What was that horrible sensation he felt as he passed his hand over the fleshy sore? He couldn't see in the rain, but his leg told him that it was something hairy, almost bristly. ...
— The White Feather Hex • Don Peterson

... fools and their money are soon parted. If my advice had been taken, that old skin-flint should have been d—n'd before he had got more than the third of his demand. 'Tis a sure sign you came easily by your money, when you squander it away in this manner. Ah! God help you, how many bristly beards must I have mowed before I earned four shillings and threepence-halfpenny, which is all thrown to the dogs! How many days have I sat weaving hair till my toes were numbed by the cold, my fingers cramped, and my nose as blue as the sign of the periwig that hung over the door! ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... strikes us with disgust. It has six feet, two eyes, and a sort of sting, proboscis, or sucker, with which it pierces the skin, and sucks the blood. The skin of the louse is hard and transparent, with here and there several bristly hairs: at the end of each leg are two claws, by which it is enabled to lay hold of the hairs, on which it climbs. There is scarcely any animal known to multiply so fast as this unwelcome intruder: from an experiment of Lieuenhoek, ...
— The History of Insects • Unknown

... tail. The accumulation of sweat and dust between the folds of the skin and on the surface of the harness, and the specially acrid character of the sweat in certain horses, contribute to chafing or "intertrigo." The heels often become congested owing to the irritation caused by the short, bristly hairs in clipped heels. Again, congestion may occur from friction by halter, harness, or other foreign body under the pastern, or inside the thigh or arm, or by reason of blows from another foot (cutting, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... life been down in the beggarly plain. I awoke in the straw, in the corn, such was the rascals plot to ruin me. The ears were sticking in my nose and eyes when I came to myself, the sorry, brittle, bristly stuff, that I had never yet seen except in the pallet of my bed. Scandal and shame! Murder and house-breaking are not so detestable! and no law against it, no remedy, no mortal skill in the whole ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... best braves. And so, one evening in taquitock (autumn), when the red glow of the forests was half veiled in the bluish mist that came with the return of soft languid days after frost had painted the trees and ripened the bristly chinquapins and luscious persimmons, Claw-of-the-Eagle took his flute and ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson

... for ever. Their features, as yet but roguishly indicated, will have become set and hidebound; their soft little snouts will be ringed, and hard as a fifth hoof; their dainty little ears—veritable silk purses—will have grown long and bristly: in short, they will have lost that ineffable tender bloom of young life which makes them quite a touching sight to-day. Strange that loss of charm which comes with development in us all, pigs included. A tendency to pigginess, as in these youngsters, a tendency to manhood ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... a hideous dwarf, cunning, malicious, and a perfect master in tormenting. Of hard, forbidding features, with head and face large enough for a giant. His black eyes were restless, sly, and cunning; his mouth and chin bristly with a coarse, hard beard; his face never clean, but always distorted with a ghastly grin, which showed the few discolored fangs that supplied the place of teeth. His dress consisted of a large high-crowned hat, a worn-out dark suit, a pair of most capacious shoes, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... this part of the road; the leopards have demonstrated this by collaring those that have followed the few white men's carriages that have driven along it. You may, see big game from it—I only saw pigs; they crossed the road, grey and bristly fellows, I'd swear they were wild, but I met Shans driving others in leash so like that now I am not ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... "Droves of six hundred swine"—I have seen (by reading in those old books) certain noble gentlemen, "of Putlitz," I think, driving them openly, captured by the stronger hand; and have heard the short querulous squeak of the bristly creatures: "What is the use of being a pig at all, if I am to be stolen in this way, and surreptitiously made into ham?" Pigs do continue to be bred in Brandenburg: but it is under such discouragements. Agriculture, trade, well-being and well-doing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... was a miniature dynamo of a man, throbbing with a restless, inexhaustible tide of energy. Short and wiry, he stared truculently at the universe through wonderfully clear blue eyes, surrounded by a bumper crop of freckles and topped by a mat of bristly red hair. His short stub nose had prodded into countless hostile places where it most emphatically was not wanted. It would be hardly necessary to old acquaintances of his to say that he was ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore

... twilight gleam in the north, revealing the narrow sounds and deep mountain-girdled lochs along which we passed; gray crags gleamed dimly on the sight; birch-feathered acclivities presented against sea and sky their rough bristly edges; all was vast, dreamy, obscure, like one of Martin's darker pictures: the land of the seer and the spectre could not have been better seen. Morning broke dim and gray, while we were yet several miles from Portree; and I reached the inn in time ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... The mountebank carried it! What kind of scales could there be in the heart of this woman? By what measure did she weigh her love? She took off her ducal coronet, and flung it on the platform of a clown! She took from her brow the Olympian aureola, and placed it on the bristly head of a gnome! The world had turned topsy-turvy. The insects swarmed on high, the stars were scattered below, whilst the wonder-stricken Gwynplaine, overwhelmed by a falling ruin of light, and lying in the dust, was enshrined in a glory. One all-powerful, revolting against beauty and splendour, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... an open space which the elephant had been clearing the day before. He was seated on his hind legs, gazing up at the moon with his fine warm coat all bristly, scoffing and scoffing. He was far too busy with his ill-natured merriment to hear them coming. In a flash the dog had him by the throat, holding him while the man robbed him of his clothing. When they ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson

... his bristly head. "I'd get the B, Chrissy. It will please her for you to think about her name. Nobody ever calls her ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... countenance suddenly. His square, bristly, grim jaw hardened and stiffened, so dear to him were all his stubborn convictions and grizzly, ancient feuds. But he bestirred himself to cause information to be conveyed to Bruce Gilhooley of his son's whereabouts for he readily suspected that the family had ...
— Who Crosses Storm Mountain? - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... his heavy grey brows together and looked at her grimly over his spectacles, poking his bristly under-lip out in astonishment, bewildered that he should have been answered by a gentle, pretty woman, all frills and sparkle like his own daughter. He had been wont to look upon a woman as something like a kitten,—that is, a young ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... Hickey turned to his two companions, one of whom was a tall, lanky chap, with straggly black hair, and bristly, unshaven chin. The other was a short, fat, rather good-natured looking little man, whose truculent chin, however, gave the lie to his incessant smile. Somehow, you felt, after a lengthy inspection of this latter, that he was by no means the amiable ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering

... the valuable fur seal, which is used in Europe for wearing apparel, and is seldom found north of the Privilov Islands in Bering Sea. The latter animal is too well known to need description, but the skin of the hair seal is a kind of dirty grey, flecked with dark spots, and is short and bristly. But it is warm and durable and therefore used by the Tchuktchis for breeches and foot wear. Recently, too, it has been introduced into Europe for the use of chauffeurs of automobiles, but ten years ago it was practically worthless; although the flesh is preferable ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... were flung round his neck. Again she kissed his bristly cheeks with her ruby-red lips. "You are an old dear," she exclaimed. "You're the kindest ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... developments, your acquaintance with him begins and ends; the eyes, the fan, the mantilla, how it began, how it was broken off, and how it began again. Opposite sits another French gentleman, with beard and bristly hair. He spent twenty years of his life in India, and he talks of his son who has been out there for the last ten, and who has just returned home. There is the Italian comtesse of sixty summers, who dresses like a girl of sixteen and smokes a cigar ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... stood at the door of the tavern, I saw a remarkable looking person coming up the street. He had a ruddy face, garnished with the stumps of a bristly red beard and mustache; on one side of his head was a round cap with a knob at the top, such as Scottish laborers sometimes wear; his coat was of a nondescript form, and made of a gray Scotch plaid, with the fringes hanging all about it; he wore pantaloons ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... is coarse and bristly, and usually prolonged into a sort of crest or mane along the neck and shoulders, and to a slighter degree down the back; ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... in which I found myself was small and rather untidy. A youngish man with flaxen hair, a bristly straw-coloured moustache, and a dropping nether lip, was sitting and holding my wrist. For a minute we stared at each other without speaking. He had watery grey eyes, oddly void of expression. Then just overhead came a sound like an iron bedstead being knocked about, and the low angry growling ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... the weapon back into his blouse. He was beginning to like this little firebrand. In truth, Grim had rather fairly described him as a gamecock. His stature, the bristly red hair that flamed above a freckled face, the lightest of blue eyes that snapped with excitement, ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner

... his bow-back he hath a battle set Of bristly pikes, that ever threat his foes; His eyes, like glow-worms, shine when he doth fret; His snout digs sepulchres where'er he goes; Being moved, he strikes whate'er is in his way, And when he strikes his crooked ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... the crows and gulls had not had time to capture all the prizes. There were savoury blue-shelled mussels clinging under the tips of the rocks; plump, spiral whelks between the oozy tresses of the seaweed; orange starfish and bristly sea-urchins in the shallow pools. All these dainties had shells that the cub's young teeth could easily crush, and they yielded meaty morsels that made beetles and grubs seem very meagre fare. Moreover, in the salty bitter of this sea-fruit ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... The bark of the trunk is reddish and sometimes cracked, but the general surface of the bark is smooth except on the smaller branches, where it long retains the marks of the fallen leaves, in the shape of bristly scales. The leaves are of a dull green, but not quite so dark as those of the Pinaster; they are semi-cylindrical, 6 inches or 7 inches long and one-twelfth of an inch broad, two in a sheath, and disposed in such a manner as to form a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... scratching his bristly head and looking the picture of ludicrous bewilderment. I watched him and meanwhile debated whether or not I should take the opportunity to knock him down. That was undoubtedly the proper course. But I could not bring myself to do it. A spirit of ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman

... alert brown eyes betrayed excitement. Like most Sikhs, he can stand looking straight in front of him and take in every detail of his surroundings; with his khaki sepoy uniform perfect down to the last crease, and his great black bristly beard groomed until it shone, he might have been ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy

... assignment memo into a small, hard ball and hurled it at the bristly image of himself in the bar mirror. He hadn't shaved in three days—which was how long it had been since he had been notified of his removal from Space Patrol Service and his ...
— Postmark Ganymede • Robert Silverberg

... since Gabriel had last seen him, but he had not forgotten his greasy carcase, his surly face with its narrow, wrinkled forehead fringed with bristly hair, his bull neck that scarcely allowed him to breathe, and that made every breath like the blast of a bellows. All the servants of the Cathedral envied him his post, which was the most lucrative of all, to say nothing of the favour he enjoyed ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... as she knelt there in the shapeless cotton-stuff uniform of poverty, through the very tenement of her body, a light had flashed up into her eyes. She drew her son closer, crushing his puny cheek up against hers, cupping his bristly little head in her by no means ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... of the deep that region is certainly rich; for the Upper and Lower Sea meet there. The exormiston[842], a sort of king among fishes, with bristly nostrils and a milky delicacy of flavour, is found in these waters. In stormy weather it is tossed about on the top of the waves, and seems to be too tired or too indolent to seek a refuge in ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... struck with terror lest they should have encountered a tiger, and rushed forward ready to fire. The dogs were endeavouring to enter a thicket, in the midst of which Fritz declared he had caught a glimpse of an animal larger than the buffalo, with a black, bristly skin. I was just about to discharge my gun into the thicket, when Jack, who had lain down on the ground, to look under the bushes, burst into a loud laugh. "It is another trick of that vexatious animal, our old sow! ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... short bristly fat waddling person with a grin; he grinned all over his face. He was not nice in his habits. He ate wasp nests and frogs and worms; and he waddled about by ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter

... the former a fine Meniscium, frondibus 6-8 pedalibus, and an arborescent Polypodium, caudice 12-15 pedali, partibus novellis densissime ferrugineo-tomentosis; frondibus subtus glauco-albidis. The caudex is altogether similar in structure to that of Alsophyla, equally furnished with strong black bristly radicles towards its base. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings, tenanted during summer by the fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto; but the whole island, with the exception of this western point, and a line of hard white beach on the seacoast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of the sweet myrtle, so much prized by the horticulturists of England. The shrub here often attains ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... which Mark had anticipated. The Bishop's pink plump hands of which he made such use contrasted with the lean, scratched, and grimy hands of his father; the Bishop's hair white and glossy made his father's bristly, badly cut hair look more bristly and worse cut than ever, and the Bishop's voice ripe and unctuous grew more and more mellow as his father's became harsher and more assertive. Mark found himself thinking of some lines in The Jackdaw ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... the monster with his machetto. At the same time, and almost without knowing how, I found myself engaged with another of the creatures. But the contest was no equal one. In vain did we stab and strike with our machettos; our antagonists were covered and defended with a hard bristly hide, which our knives, although keen and pointed, had great difficulty in penetrating; and on the other hand we found ourselves clutched in long sinewy arms, terminating in hands and fingers, of which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... purpose, rules Jean-Bon Saint-Andre; with an Army of Red Nightcaps. In Bourdeaux rules Tallien, with his Isabeau and henchmen: Guadets, Cussys, Salleses, may fall; the bloody Pike and Nightcap bearing supreme sway; the Guillotine coining money. Bristly fox-haired Tallien, once Able Editor, still young in years, is now become most gloomy, potent; a Pluto on Earth, and has the keys of Tartarus. One remarks, however, that a certain Senhorina Cabarus, or call ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... the characteristics of the cow, the donkey, the pig, and the goat! It is a large and powerful beast, considerably larger than a tahr, and longer in the leg. The body is covered with very coarse hair, which assumes the form of a bristly mane on the neck and shoulders, and gives the beast a ferocious appearance, which does not belie its disposition. The colour is a dull black on the back, bright red on the sides, and white underneath, the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... for about a quarter of an hour when Marechal reappeared. Behind him came a stout thickset man of heavy build, and gorgeously dressed. His face, surrounded by a bristly dark brown beard, and his eyes overhung by bushy eyebrows, gave him, at the first glance, a harsh appearance. But his mouth promptly banished this impression. His thick and sensual lips betrayed voluptuous tastes. A disciple of ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... with age, which clustered tightly over his head, except where they had retreated from his deeply seamed and wrinkled forehead, were the crinkled flow above her smooth white brow; and the line of the bristly tufts that overhung his eyes was the same as that of the low arches above hers. Her complexion was from her mother; his skin was dusky yellow; but they had the same mouth, and hers showed how sweet his mouth must have been in his youth. His eyes, deep sunk in their cavernous sockets, had ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... glance on the rude trousers of spotted hyena skin or the big lean body of the castaway. Neither the wild whirling of the sun-blackened arms nor the bristly stubble of a six weeks' growth of beard could prevent him from instantly recognizing ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... touched glasses, uttered the vilest imprecations. Conspicuous among them is Marco Graspum: it is enough that we have before introduced him to the reader at Marston's mansion. His dark peering eyes glisten as he sits holding a glass of liquor in one hand, and runs his fingers through his bristly hair with the other. "The depths of trade are beyond some men," he says, striking his hand on the table; then, catching up a paper, tears it into pieces. "Only follow my directions; and there can be no missing your man," he continued, addressing ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... tunic shabby and open in a negligent fashion at his thick throat, stood waiting for them. His unhelmeted head was grizzled, his coarse, tanned face with heavy jowls bristly enough to suggest he had not bothered to use smooth-cream for some days. An under officer of some spacer, retired to finish out the few years before pension in this nominal duty—fast letting down the standards of personal regime he had had to ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... peculiar animals, without teeth, but provided with a rough tongue to lick up the ants. The length of this animal is about four feet, but the thick tail is longer than the body. Whereas the tapir has a hog-like skin, the ant-bear has long, bristly hairs. ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... our friend Bones, all to the good, fondling that bristly terror! I say, three Bones for cheers!" shouted Red Huggins, known among his mates also as "Sorreltop," and who, when greatly excited, often became twisted in ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes

... nearly continuous furrows, the sides of which are bearded with the bristling ends of fibres broken by the growth swelling of the trunk, and when the fire comes creeping around the feet of the trees, it runs up these bristly furrows in lovely pale blue quivering, bickering rills of flame with a low, earnest whispering sound to the lightning-shattered top of the trunk, which, in the dry Indian summer, with perhaps leaves ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... uneven, jagged, rugged, scraggy, or scabrous. Now frequently a man's face or head is rough because unshaved or uncombed; also the fur of an animal is rough. Hence the term could be used for unkempt, disheveled, shaggy, hairy, coarse, bristly. "The child ran its hand over its father's rough cheek" and "The bear had a rough coat" are sentences that even the most unimaginative mind can understand. We speak of rough timber because its surface has not been planed or made smooth. We speak of a rough diamond because it is unpolished, uncut. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... heard it highly recommended, I should fear it was much inferior to many others. One species of Barley-grass, which grows very commonly in our sea-marshes, the Hordeum maritimum, is apt to render cattle diseased in the mouth, from chewing the seeds, which are armed with a strong bristly awn not dissimilar to the spike of ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury

... from the opposite end of the glade. This was a man of the largest and most sinewy mould, his face tanned by sun and wind to a uniform hard ruddy brown, and his shaggy black hair untrimmed, as well as his dark bristly beard. His jerkin was of rough leather, crossed by a belt, sustaining sword and dagger; a bow and arrows were at his back; a huge quarter-staff in his hand; and his whole aspect was that of a ferocious outlaw, whose hand was against ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of his life, he wanted to know about economics and politics. He cared nothing for books. He was a clean, stalky, shapely boy, with a bright, clean-cut, incisive face; large, clear, gray eyes; a wide forehead; short, bristly, dark-brown hair. He had an incisive, quick-motioned, self-sufficient manner, and was forever asking questions with a keen desire for an intelligent reply. He never had an ache or pain, ate his food with gusto, and ruled his brothers with ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... into the town office and had faced Cap'n Aaron Sproul, first selectman, and had complained that Ferd Parrott was running "a reg'lar rum-hole." Cap'n Sproul had nipped his bristly beard and gazed away from them at the ceiling, and said he would see what could be ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... day. Nothing like that was he earning these six years later when he could make the beauteous works of art in jelly. I asked him if he liked his work. He shrugged his shoulders and brushed one side of his rather bristly blond mustache. "Na—no like so much—nothing in it but the moaney—make good moaney." He shrugged his shoulders again and brushed up the other side of his mustache. "No good work just for tha moaney." You see he really is an artist. He was my quiet, nice friend, Monsieur Le ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... remonstrated, turned round, and said, "Vy, I say, who are you, I vonder, as is so partiklar about your hysight." I felt an involuntary shudder—to-day, thought I, I am John Ebenezer Scropps—two days ago I was Lord Mayor; and so the rencontre ended, evidently to the advantage of the bristly brute. It was however too much for me—the effect of contrast was too powerful, the change was too sudden—and I determined to go to Brighton for a few weeks to refresh myself, and be weaned ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various

... a formidable character; and his brow, moreover, had that peculiar tension which always impresses one as a sign of a keen impatient temperament: the blue veins stood out like cords under the transparent yellow skin, and this intimidating brow was softened by no tendency to baldness, for the grey bristly hair, cut down to about an inch in length, stood round it in as close ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... vexed with him. He let his eyelids drop: but the occasion for showing the prickliness of the bristly social English, could not be resisted. Dr. Peter Yatt was tricked to confess, that small annoyances were, in his experience, powerful on the human frame; and Dr. John Cormyn was very neatly brought round to assure him he was mistaken if he supposed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... tapping the flinching Tom's bristly cheek with his pistol barrel, "you're a likely cove at tying knots—get to work, my lad, and sharp ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... depressed from above downwards, and the enormous opening of their mouth, readily distinguish them from the Toad Fishes, whose head is of moderate size, and, like their bodies, compressed laterally. They are either smooth or variously hairy or bristly, and are always destitute of the regular scales with which fishes are generally invested. They are furnished, especially on the lips and the under parts, with numerous short, loose processes of skin, which add considerably to their sense of touch. There ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various

... field; and quite close to the church are erected two others—the larger of cipollino, beautified by a patina of golden lichen; a marble well-head, worn half through with usage of ropes, may be found buried in the rank grass. The plain whereon stood the great city of Sipus is covered, now, with bristly herbage. The sea has retired from its old beach, and half-wild cattle browse on the site of those lordly quays and palaces. Not a stone is left. Malaria and desolation ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... sallow man—all cobblers are; and had a strong bristly beard—all cobblers have. His face was a queer, good-tempered, crooked-featured piece of workmanship, ornamented with a couple of eyes that must have worn a very joyous expression at one time, for they sparkled yet. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... revolver in his waist-coat pocket. Neither did he appear in public with a bowie knife down his bootleg. Not being a Mexican, he did not carry a knife, and besides he always wore congress gaiters. Owing to the fact that he was a large florid sandy person, with a freckled bristly neck and a singularly direct fearless manner of looking at his man with eyes that were small, sunken, baleful and rather piggy, the exigencies of Mr. Hennage's profession had never even warranted recourse to his two ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... beside her, and listenin' with both ears stretched and his mouth open, was a blond young gent with a bristly Bat Nelson pompadour. He's rigged out in a silk faced tuxedo, a smoke colored, open face vest, and he has a big yellow orchid in his buttonhole. By the way he's gazin' at Maizie, you could tell he approved of her from the ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... a medium sized man, with a pasty white, freckled complexion, bristly red hair, a retreating forehead and small, sharp eyes, came forward from the dark corner near the door. His thin lips writhed in a mocking smile, as he stood confronting Peleg and Abner, and looking first at one and then ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... opened, and a thick-set, florid man, buttoned up in a fawn colored raincoat and wearing a bowler hat of obsolete build, entered. He possessed a black mustache, a breezy, bustling manner, and humorous blue eyes; furthermore, when he took off his hat, he revealed the possession of a head of very bristly, upstanding, black hair. This was Detective-Sergeant Sowerby, and the same who was engaged in examining a newspaper in the study of Henry Leroux when Dr. Cumberly and his daughter had paid their second visit to that scene ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... region, is found even as far as the State of New York. Observe him as he stands with huge palmated horns ready for action, his vast nostrils snuffing up the scent coming from afar; his eyes dilated, and ears moving, watching for a foe; his bristly mane erect; his large body supported on his somewhat thick but agile limbs, standing fully six feet six inches in height at the shoulder, above which rise the head and antlers. The creature's muzzle is very broad, protruding, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... and the prickers advancing into the wood, presently afterwards reared the enormous brute. Sallying forth, and freaming furiously, he was instantly assailed by the mastiffs; but, notwithstanding the number of his assailants, he made light of them, shaking them from his bristly hide, crushing them beneath his horny feet, thrusting at them with his sharpened tusks, and committing ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... door reopened, and he was met by a stout, rather wizened old gentleman with white bristly hair and closely cropped moustache, a man whose ruddy face showed good living, and who moved with the brisk alertness of a man ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux

... for volunteers. He also said that he thoroughly understood modern guns, and was prepared to take command of any artillery which Ulster might happen to possess. I lay back in my chair and tried to form a mental picture of Malcolmson, who is stout and has a bristly white moustache, aiming an immense cannon at an income tax collector. The vision was a pleasant one to linger over, and I added to the scene before my mind the figure of an athletic policeman threatening to smash Malcolmson's ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham

... only, but young child Tickling the bristly boar with tender hand, Will lay him prostrate sooner ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... for sifting the air, for freeing it from foreign matter, or for warming it if it is too cold; whereas the nostrils appear to have been designed for this very purpose. Their narrow and winding channels are covered with bristly hairs which filter or sift and arrest the dust and other impurities in the air; and in the channels of the nostrils and back of them the air is warmed or sufficiently tempered before it reaches the lungs. Moreover it can be felt that the lungs ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... hairs, silvery white at the base, the following segments bordered with silvery white; legs blue and purple, thickly clothed with long whitish hairs, femora bluish-green, fore tibiae with pale gilded down beneath, hind tibiae with a black bristly apical tuft beneath; wings blackish, grey towards the base; halteres whitish, marked with black. Length of the body 11 lines; of the ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various

... souter, wi' his bristly chin, Frae whilk the lasses screechin' rin; The curly-headed whupper-in, Will a' be ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... the first woman out of Eden or the last woman of that descent. When Cocky, balanced on one leg, the other leg in the air as the foot of it held the scruff of Michael's neck, leaned to Michael's ear and wheedled, Michael could only lay down silkily the bristly hair-waves of his neck, and with silly half-idiotic eyes of bliss agree to whatever was Cocky's will or ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... observe, that the Leaves of what is call'd the Artichoke be pointing inwards, and lie close at the Top, for then the Bottom will be large and full; but if you find many of the Leaves of the Artichoke spread from the Top, then the Choke, or bristly part is shot so much, that it has drawn out much of the Heart of the Artichoke; and as the Flower comes forward, the more that grows, the thinner will be the Bottom, which is the ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley

... the point—are you so entirely sure that she is a dangerous maniac? That is what I want to ask you—whether there isn't a possibility, however remote, that a mistake may conceivably have been made? Please don't misunderstand me," she interjected quickly, seeing how he—already stiff and bristly—had at her words stiffened and bristled still more. "I do not mean to intimate that anything unethical has been done. In fact I am quite sure that everything has been quite ethical. And I am not questioning your professional standing or decrying ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... little way off, a fluttering swarm of women about her, with water, brandy, hartshorn, cologne, fans, and burning feathers, and Cousin 'Ratio, kneeling over her, was calling in her ear, the tears running down his bristly cheeks. ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... The sight was, indeed, not the most encouraging to weak nerves. Clumsily lowered the legs, the feet making a ladder of cleets of wood nailed to the window, until the burly figure of the wrecker, encased with red shirt and blue trousers, stood out full to view. Over his head stood bristly hair in jagged tufts; and as he drew his brawny hand over the broad disc of his sun-scorched face, winking and twisting his eyes in the glare, there stood boldly outlined on his features the index of his profession. He shrugged his shoulders, gathered his nether garments quickly about him, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... sir. I gather now what your bad news is," says Bingo, who has been dejectedly rubbing his finger along the bristly edges of his sandy moustache, for a minute past. "Judgin' by the marginal annotations of this man Blinders—brute I'd kick to Cape Town with pleasure—my wife's ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... and down, in imitation of the movement of a bird's pinions, and continued to do so a little while, when instead of any perceptible token of feathers or wings making their appearance, my own thin skin, alas! grew into a hard leathern hide, covered with bristly hair, my fingers and toes disappeared, the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet became four solid hoofs, and from the end of my spine a long tail projected. My face was enormous, my mouth wide, my nostrils ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould

... other Folk, his hair (snow-white) was not twisted into a fantastic knot and fastened with gold pins, but hung loose and was cut square off at about the level of his shoulders, forming a tremendous, bristly mass that reminded one ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... but lived in days gone by When Richard raised his voice on high And offered Kingdom for a Horse, To him he might have had recourse.... Imagine bristly Berkshire swine Upon the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... vainly hides, I have fled as a stag's antler, of ruddy course, I have fled as an iron in a glowing fire, I have fled as a spear-head, of woe to such as have a wish for it; I have fled as a fierce bull bitterly fighting, I have fled as a bristly boar seen in a ravine, I have fled as a white grain of pure wheat; Into a dark leathern bag I was thrown, And on a boundless ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... of keeping order. Old Wulf, from the moment Hypatia had begun, had never taken his eyes off her face; and again and again the maiden's weak heart had been cheered, as she saw the smile of sturdy intelligence and honest satisfaction which twinkled over that scarred and bristly visage; while every now and then the graybeard wagged approval, until she found herself, long before the end of the oration, addressing herself ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... to another of the three in quick succession, stroked his rather bristly moustache, and lit a cigarette, not because he wanted to smoke, but because he could not help it, which is a very different thing. Then he looked at his picture and forgot that he was not alone with it; and it still pleased ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford

... cried Lady Nora. "Fancy Bobby with a dark lantern, a bristly beard, and a red handkerchief about his neck. All burglars are like that, you know; and then fancy him creeping up the aisle with his Johnnie—no, his jimmy—and his felt slippers—fancy Bobby in felt slippers—and he reaches the treasury door, and just then the moon comes up and ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith

... don't suppose that a boar will allow himself to be killed as easily as a squirrel. I fear, in spite of all your professions, you will find it not so agreeable a sport as shooting larks on the plain of St. Denis. The bristly fellow who comes trotting and grunting towards you, showing his teeth, stopping occasionally to sharpen them against the root of some old oak, is not generally in the best of humours; but you can, at any rate, reckon upon ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... and with the ponderous heft Of gnarled branch. And by the time of night O'ertaken, they would throw, like bristly boars, Their wildman's limbs naked upon the earth, Rolling themselves in leaves and fronded boughs. Nor would they call with lamentations loud Around the fields for daylight and the sun, Quaking and wand'ring in shadows of the ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... at me as if I were a servant asking for higher wages. The speaker, a fat man with a bristly moustache and a red necktie, ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... nor could the noon-day sun 550 Smite through it, or fast-falling show'rs pervade, So thick it was, and underneath the ground With litter of dry foliage strew'd profuse. Hunters and dogs approaching him, his ear The sound of feet perceived; upridging high His bristly back and glaring fire, he sprang Forth from the shrubs, and in defiance stood Near and right opposite. Ulysses, first, Rush'd on him, elevating his long spear Ardent to wound him; but, preventing quick 560 His ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... the middle height, broad-chested, broad- shouldered, "thick set," very strongly built, the arms and legs short, thick, and muscular, the hands and feet large. The bodies, and specially the limbs, of many are covered with short bristly hair. I have seen two boys whose backs are covered with fur as fine and soft as that of a cat. The heads and faces are very striking. The foreheads are very high, broad, and prominent, and at first sight give one the impression of an unusual ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... chair rolled into the light, the hideousness, not the grace and serenity of old age, was revealed. His white hair, thin and half-combed, straggled over the dark-red, purple-veined skin of his head; his cheeks were flabby bags of bristly, wrinkled leather; his mouth was a sunken, irregular slit, losing itself in the hanging folds at the corners, and even the life, gathered into his small, restless gray eyes, was half quenched under the red and ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... end. The different ages too, are distinguished as much by their hair as their complexion, their facial angle, or in any other way. He was led to this theory first, by observing at school that a boy of a stiff, bristly head of hair, was remarkably cruel. He professed to have been able, from a long course of observation, to assign to every different colour and variety of hair, its peculiar temperament and character. One mental quality was ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... many windings, and was lighted by an occasional lamp. The air was cold and damp. The openings high up in the wall, through which glimmered a pale daylight, became rarer, until at length it was as dark as the tomb. The new arrival was received by the gaoler, a man with bristly grey hair, a prominent forehead, and pronounced features which incessant ill-humour had twisted into a lasting grimace. Who would not be ill-humoured indeed, were he forced to spend a blameless life in a dungeon among thieves and murderers and even—worst of all—among those who had been ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... you—now you're through being just pals. Oh, I'd have told you, anyway, I reckon, only the play never came right, after that first little squabble we had over it." He put an arm around her, pulled her down beside him, and rubbed his bristly chin over her hair. "That's the wolf joke, William. I did make a lot of money wolfing—on the square. I dug out a den of pups and struck a little pocket of pretty rich gravel. I've been busy panning it out all the time I could spare, till the ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... men of Mars; their ears are high set, but more laterally located than are the green men's, while their snouts and teeth are much like those of our African gorilla. Upon their heads grows an enormous shock of bristly hair. ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Trap-Door City seemed deserted. Not a spider could be seen near the shining, circular doors. Only here and there crouched a huge, bristly warrior safe behind a jutting rock with his glittering eight eyes fixed on the ...
— Loot of the Void • Edwin K. Sloat

... in whatever I bade him do, was more provoking than downright rebellion could have been; and I secretly agreed with my friends that the attempt would prove a complete failure, while impelled, I hardly could tell how, to persevere with redoubled efforts. Jack's uncouth bristly hair fell in a straight mass over one of the finest foreheads ever seen, and concealed it. I happened one day to put aside this mass, for the benefit of his sight, and was so struck with the nobly expansive brow, that I exclaimed ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... had never seen before. Old men, young men, and boys, all on their rough-coated horses, and how they came indoors, and what a noise they made all talking together in their big deep voices. They looked terrible men, so tall and brown and fierce, with their rough bristly beards; and they all spoke in such funny tones to her, as if they were trying to make ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... 1747, the Chevalier comes in sight of the Place; scans a little the frowning buttresses, bristly with guns; the dumb Alps, to right and left, looking down on him and it. Chevalier de Belleisle judges that, however difficult, it can and must be possible to French valor; and storms in upon it, huge and furious (20,000, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... gradually became the most distasteful of all to me. Either he hadn't brought a razor along or it was too wet for shaving—or something; and his whiskers grew out, and they were bristly and red in color, which was something I had not suspected before. As I sat there with the little rivulets running down the back of my neck and the rust forming on my amalgam fillings and mold on my shoes and mushrooms ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... knock on the head, but all at once I felt that sorry, that I took her up in my arms; but no, she wouldn't let me! Made herself so heavy, quite a hundredweight, and caught hold where she could with her hands, so that one couldn't get them off! Well, so I began stroking her head. It was so bristly,—just like a hedgehog! So I stroked and stroked, and she quieted down at last. I soaked a bit of rusk and gave it her. She understood that, and began nibbling. What were we to do with her? We took her; took her, and began ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... brown-bearded man, bigger and broader, it seemed to her, than any man she had ever spoken to before, took away her senses. As he came up to her she involuntarily shrank back; and when he stooped to kiss her, the novel sensation of his bristly beard against her face, the strong scent of tobacco, and the sense that she was unwelcome, all contributed towards complete self-betrayal. Dizzy from her voyage; faint, sick, and unhinged, she almost pushed him ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... those in which each particular hair has its particular place, and must be of a silky texture, and not of a bristly consistency, like a worn-out tooth-brush. Neither must they be of a bright red, bearing a striking resemblance to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various

... his revolver—which by the way was useless, he having expended all his cartridges—and Billy with the Arab rifle. Suddenly from dead ahead of the two boys there was a savage squeal and, before either of them realized what had happened, a boar with gleaming white tusks and bristly hair rushed out of the ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... like the men, and we had to make love to such a set of bristly, grisly wretches!—pah! shouldn't we think them ugly! The patience of the women, putting ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... ring the bell; and so prayed a passing milk-boy to perform that office for him. When the bell was rung, a head appeared between the interstices of the dining-room shutters, and the door was opened by a man in drab breeches and gaiters, with a dirty old coat, a foul old neckcloth lashed round his bristly neck, a shining bald head, a leering red face, a pair of twinkling grey eyes, and a ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... might be a lead. But an hour later, when I'd had a chance to look him over, I was for passin' Stukey up. For he sure was disappointin' to view. One of these thin, sallow, dyspeptic parties, with deep lines down either side of his mouth, a bristly, jutty little mustache, and ratty ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... leave him. And who knows what then might happen? Perhaps he might turn the woman out of the house then, as she was so horrid to him, and always slept in another room, and banged the door in his face. Wasn't he as strong as an ox? Wasn't he rather a fine-looking man? Even if his hair were bristly and already grey, and his eyes rather watery, he was still a man for all that. And he had money—oh, such a lot. The servant's heart beat more rapidly when she thought of it. All the shops in Gradewitz ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig

... do not hurt the inside of the animal's lips. The roof of the whale's mouth is covered with smaller pieces of whalebone hanging down like bristled quills. Many of these are only a few inches long, but they make the whole of the upper part of the whale's mouth rough and bristly. ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... train started fishing rods could be seen sticking out of all the windows and doors, giving to the train the appearance of a huge, bristly caterpillar winding ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... they had come within her range. I remember myself that she did look rather formidable. Her double-gown was red and yellow; and her hair, wound up in little horn-shaped papillotes, imparted to her face quite a bristly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... do, Son?" Daddy asked, smoothing the bristly little head. "I said could I take mine home," Jimmie mumbled, fishing a tight-folded sheet ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means

... of his bristly hair. Jake irritated him to a degree, and the roar of laughter which greeted the slow-witted baker's sally set ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... nothing to hang on to but some iron railings. I got along, slowly, safely, and uncomfortably, and finally reached the middle. My hopes began to rise a little, but they were quickly blighted; for there I met a hog—a long-nosed, bristly fellow, that held up his snout and worked his nostrils at me inquiringly. A hog on a pleasure excursion in Switzerland—think of it! It is striking and unusual; a body might write a poem about it. He could not retreat, if he had been disposed to do it. It would have been foolish to stand ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... myself on these occasions I like a bit of a run as an early refresher. But here on this rough ground in the middle of the island there were not three yards of level to be found, and so as Coppinger proceeded to go through some sort of dumb-bell exercises with a couple of lumps of bristly lava, I followed his example. Coppinger has done a good deal of roughing it in his time, but being a doctor of medicine amongst other things—he takes out a new degree of some sort on an average every other year—he ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... about the same chances of success as attended the unfortunate cat which ventured without claws among panthers. Measure such men by their moral worth and by the good they do, and do not require of the hard-shell Methodist preacher and tough polemical grappler with Satan in his most bristly and thick-skinned Western incarnations that he display too much delicacy. Those who will read his book may gather from it, beyond the interesting personal and political narrative of which it consists, many useful ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... bristles, that appeared to have been clipped about a fortnight before; and as he wore neither shoe nor stocking, he exhibited a pair of legs to which Rob Roy's were drumsticks. They gave proof of powerful strength, and the thick fell of bristly hair with which they were covered argued an amazing hardihood of constitution ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... grunt, a stoutly-built man who might have been of any age, though he could not have been very young, judging from his bristly greyish whiskers, was also busily occupied, but in a calmer, more ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... we approached, something would take fright. Perhaps it would be a little shore crab that betrayed itself by scuffling down amongst the corallite or sea-weed, perhaps a little fierce-looking bristly fish, which shot under a ledge of the rock all amongst the limpets, acorn barnacles, or the thousands of yellow and brown and striped snaily fellows that crawled about in company with the periwinkles ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn

... after that visit her lights had failed to go on—darkness brooded out into the areaway, seemed to grope blindly in at his expectant, uncurtained window. Then the lights had appeared at last, and instead of Caroline and her callers they stowed a stodgy family—a little man with a bristly mustache and a full-bosomed woman who spent her evenings patting her hips and rearranging bric-a-brac. After two days of them Merlin had callously pulled ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... indicates bastards, by a streak of hair at the right of the vulva (fig. 19). When that ascending hair is coarse and bristly, it is a sure evidence that ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... Corporal Dowdall were encouraged at seeing a man who looked like a gentleman and bore none of the traditional marks of the prize-fighter. His head was not cropped to the point of bristly baldness, his nose was unbroken, his eyes well opened and unblackened, his ears unthickened, his body untattooed. He had the white skin, small trim moustache, high-bred features, small extremities, and general appearance ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... is over!" said Marat, resting his bristly head on the back of his velvet arm-chair. "Now we will listen to the music a little, and look at the pretty ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... broad shoulders and a well-shaped back, despite the ill form his ragged coat tried to give it. At a slap on the shoulder he turned about, showing to the merchant a ruddy, sea-tanned skin, light brown hair, gray eyes, and a chin and mouth hidden by a two months' beard, still too bristly to give him other ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... Lake or Swamp Gooseberry, with the prickly stems of the gooseberry, but with a raceme of flowers like those of a currant; found in the cold bogs and wet woods of the North; small, bristly berries, of unpleasant flavor. ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... tricked the eye into a fancy that they lived. One could all but hear the snarls of the two standing boldly in the moonlight, the hair all bristly along the necks, the white fangs gleaming between tense-drawn lips. One felt tempted to brace oneself for the rush ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower

... no right to call me an idjit," said the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantryman. He was an aggressive, red-visaged man with bristly black hair ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... time. Yussuf had a little reed in his hand—the kalem for writing, about two feet long and of the size of a quill. I took it and showed it to the Bimbashee and said—'Behold the neboot wherewith we are all to be murdered by this Sheykh of the Religion.' The Bimbashee's bristly moustache bristled savagely, for he felt that the 'Arab dogs' and the Christian khanzeereh (feminine pig) were ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... creature into the room. His thick, bristly hair hung right over his eyes. He was grinning and evidently in a good humour. But he could speak no longer, of course, since he had lost his tongue; whatever they said to him he could only ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... been the taint of ten thousand deaths it could not have affected him more. He became a beast cast in old, old bronze, and as hard as bronze; and when he moved, it was stiffly, and all bristly, and on end. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... Chinese I positively started, for he was certainly the ugliest man I had ever seen. He was very short, but thick-set, and he had a bad limp. He wore a singlet and a pair of trousers that had been white, but were now filthy, and, perched on a shock of bristly, grey hair, an old tweed deer-stalker. It would have been grotesque on any Chinese, but on him it was outrageous. His broad, square face was very flat as though it had been bashed in by a mighty fist, and it was deeply pitted with smallpox; but the most revolting thing in him ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... from the pedal, wiped his chisel, dropped it into a leather pouch attached to the lathe, and, approaching the table, summoned his daughter. He never gave his children a blessing, so he simply held out his bristly cheek (as yet unshaven) and, regarding her tenderly and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... to him," said the little, bristly man. "Tell him that General Sir John Hackblock wishes to see him immediately." The tone was suggestive of the parade-ground ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins

... I dangled them five or six inches off the ground, he would rear up on his hindlegs and snatch and grab until he secured them. Then he would sit up and scratch himself like a dog. He would allow me to take him up in my hands and stroke him, and yet not retire into his bristly shell. He ate a dozen worms and a bumble-bee straight off the reel, and then with all the gluttony of the pig tribe he went searching about for more food. I noticed that he ate the grass, in the same way as dogs do, for ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... rangin' in tensile strength from insults to asphalt pavements, and noise!—say, all the racket in the world was a whisper. I caught a glimpse of the old man leanin' out of the pilot house, where a window had been, his white hair bristly, and his nostrils h'isted, embellishin' the air with ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... plunge To warn him if that savage crew should mark His captain and swim over to his isle. Whistle in hand he watched, his boat well ready, His men low-crouched around him, swarthy faces Grim-chinned upon the taffrail, muttering oaths That trampled down the fear i' their bristly throats, While at their sides a dreadful hint of steel Sent stray gleams to the stars. But little heed Had Drake of all that menaced him, though oft Some wandering giant, belching from the feast, All blood-besmeared, would come so near he heard His heavy ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... uncertainly for his face. Did they just touch, with exquisite contact, his bristly chin, or was it a divine illusion? ... She blushed in a very marked manner. He blinked, and his happy blinking seemed to say: "Only wills drawn by me are genuine.... Didn't I tell you Mr. Moze was not a man ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... the solid earth of it under his weary and very shaky feet. He, an epicure, ate such coarse food, washed down by such coarse ale, as Tandy's could offer with smiling relish. Later, mounted on a forest pony—an ill-favoured animal with a wall-eye, pink muzzle, bristly upper and hanging lower lip, more accustomed to carry a keg of smuggled spirits strapped beneath its belly than a cosmopolitan savant and social reformer on its back—he rode the three miles to Marychurch, proposing ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... live in that one could imagine, short of being in a fit of delirium tremens? Here is a fellow-creature of mine and yours who is asked to see all the glories of the firmament brought close to him, and he is too busy with a little unmentionable parasite that infests the bristly surface of a bee to spare an hour or two of a single evening for the splendors of the universe! I must get a peep through that microscope of his and see the pediculus which occupies a larger space in his mental vision than the midnight march of the solar ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)



Words linked to "Bristly" :   bristle, armed, bristliness, ill-natured



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