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Bristle   /brˈɪsəl/   Listen
Bristle

verb
(past & past part. bristled; pres. part. bristling)
1.
Be in a state of movement or action.  Synonyms: abound, burst.  "The garden bristled with toddlers"
2.
Rise up as in fear.  Synonyms: stand up, uprise.  "It was a sight to make one's hair uprise!"
3.
Have or be thickly covered with or as if with bristles.
4.
React in an offended or angry manner.



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"Bristle" Quotes from Famous Books



... well make this a lecture, now that I've started," Lonegan went on. "The war game isn't complex. All the bewildering technicalities that bristle from a military officer's talk are just big-name stuff designed to keep down the contempt of the crowd—the oldest professional trick. Whenever the crowd gets to understand your terminology your game is cooked. You know how it is ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort

... against which his 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 object of his intrusion, as he immediately ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... you—withdraws itself naturally, involuntarily, inevitably, into the background,—the dim distance which their eyes cannot penetrate. But, from the fraction which you do project, they construct another you, call it by your name, and pass it around for the real, the actual you. You bristle with jest and laughter and wild whims, to keep them at a distance; and they fancy this to be your every-day equipment. They think your life holds constant carnival. It is astonishing what ideas spring up in the heads of sensible people. There are those who assume that a person can never have had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... the same, but, with very slight changes, the words in which 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; ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... makes fertile British Baraland, runs from east to west, along the southern side of Gueldersdorp, swelled by innumerable thready water-courses, dry in the blistering winter heat, that the wet season disperses among the foothills that bristle with Brounckers' artillery. Seen from the altitude of a balloon or a war-kite, the course of the beer-coloured stream, flowing lazily between its high banks sparsely wooded with oak and blue gum, and lavishly clothed with cactus, mimosa, and tree-fern, tall grasses, and thorny creepers, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... situation the while Boyd Emerson took his measure, for no person quite like this fisherman had ever crossed the miner's path. He saw a huge, barrel-chested creature whose tremendous muscles bulged beneath his nondescript garments, whose red, upstanding bristle of hair topped a leather countenance from which gleamed a pair of the most violent eyes Emerson had ever beheld, the dominant expression of which was rage. His jaw was long, and the seams from nostril and lip, half hidden behind a stiff stubble, gave it the set of granite. ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... 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 de owners; and Mistah Cap'n Falk, he say ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... side of Fort Sumter is Fort Johnson on James Island, Fort Cummins Point, and Fort Wagner on Morris Island. In fact, both sides of the harbour for several miles appear to bristle with ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... face flushed, his two hands on his hips, his beard thrust forward belligerently and fairly seeming to bristle. Terry Temple, her heart beating like mad all of a sudden and for no reason which she would admit to herself, lifted her head and stepped across the threshold defiantly. For a very tense moment the two of them, old man and young girl, stared ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... "would fortify every island on the coast, plant Martello towers on every flat beach, crown every height with cannon, and station iron-clads in every harbour and bay, so that the entire coast should bristle with artillery?" That sounds well, but what guarantee have we that you really would act thus if France were ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... when he had not thought her hideous. She had a big brown mole on her chin, out of which grew a few bristling hairs. It was an unsightly thing, no doubt, on a woman's chin; and sometimes, when Marty was very angry, the hairs did actually seem to bristle, as a cat's whiskers do. When Stephen could not speak plain, he used to point his little dimpled finger at this mole and say, "Do doe away,—doe away;" and to this day it was a torment to him. His eyes seemed morbidly drawn toward it at times.. When he ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... of its aspects, suicide raises psychological questions which bristle with difficulties, but which, nevertheless, pique the curiosity and demand explanatory answers. Why, for example, is the rate of suicide strictly dependent everywhere upon season and weather? Why ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... stagnant pool stirred to profoundest depths: ARTHUR professes to be tolerant of Irish Members, but declares himself abhorrent of connivance of Right Hon. Gentleman above Gangway. Talks at Mr. G., who begins visibly to bristle before our very eyes as he sits attentive on Front Bench. ARTHUR in fine fighting trim; Ministerial bark may be labouring in troubled waters; a suddenly gathered storm, coming from all quarters, has surrounded, and threatens ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various

... is about four inches long. Near the uterus its cavity will just admit an ordinary bristle; but near its free end, at the ovary, it is ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham

... What are they now? French ones—and they never cost a blow!" Here applause broke out from the group of generals, and Joan had to pause a moment to let it subside. "Yes, English strongholds bristled before us; now French ones bristle behind us. What is the argument? A child can read it. The strongholds between us and Paris are garrisoned by no new breed of English, but by the same breed as those others—with the same fears, the same questionings, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... and holding his shoulders steady. His hips are lean and narrow as a filly's; his calves might have posed for Praxiteles. He is a modern, I perceive, for he wears no queue. Above a rounded neck rises a shock of hair the shade of dusty coal. Each hair is stiff and erect as a brush bristle. There are lice in them no doubt— but then perhaps we of the West are too squeamish in details of this minor sort. What interests me chiefly is the back of his ears. Not that they are extraordinary as ears; it is their very normality that touches ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens

... guard. What did he know of this strange black, save that he was a black and that, in the absence of a white master, all blacks required watching? Kwaque tried slowly sliding his foot along the floor, but Michael knew the trick and with bristle and growl ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... 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 Shannon ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... "You need not bristle up. She is very civil; but when I hint that Armine has study and health to consider, I see that in her eyes I am the worldly obstructive mother who serves as a trial ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... 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 ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten

... come to the wall of the Mission-house and sprang from their horses which they left loose. As they advanced side by side towards the open gate, something leapt the stoep and rushed through it. It was a striped hyena; they could see the hair bristle on its back as it passed them with a whining growl. Hand in hand they ran to the house across the little garden patch—Rachel, led by some instinct, guiding her companion straight to her parents' room whereof ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... Parisian cocks or Filipino cocks. Afterwards, they hold them up in sight of each other, close together, so that each of the enraged little creatures may see who it is that has pulled out a feather, and with whom he must fight. Their neck-feathers bristle up as they gaze at each other fixedly with flashes of anger darting from their little round eyes. Now the moment has come; the attendants place them on the ground a short distance apart and leave them a ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... the 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 ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... breakfast and he lay on his elbow gazing up through the green tracery of the bushes at the sky. It was a wonderful sky, a deep, soft, velvet blue, and it tinted the woods with glorious and kindly hues. It seemed strange to Robert, at the moment, that a forest so beautiful should bristle with danger, but he knew it too well to allow its softness and air of innocence ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler

... 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, and in the end profit little by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... than Bonivon ran 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 ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... of the ovaries, where each one terminates in 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

... strange thing has happened under the sun. Full that proportion of our English- speaking race, in both hemispheres, closing the volume of its own annals, have made up their minds to the belief that these Border- lands between German and Magyar, Teuton and Latin, Russ and Pole, bristle with antagonisms the like of which never were subdued, and never ought to be subdued by human means or motives. To them, naturally, the half century of this hissing and seething, insurrection and repression, is longer than the five ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... a certain doll which, when I was eight years old, used to be displayed in the window of an ugly little shop of the Rue de la Seine. I was very proud of being a boy; I despised little girls; and I longed impatiently for the day (which, alas! has come) when a strong white beard should bristle on my chin. I played at being a soldier; and, under the pretext of obtaining forage for my rocking-horse, I used to make sad havoc among the plants my poor mother used to keep on her window-sill. Manly amusements those, I should ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... neck, visible only when the bird stretches its neck to utter its loud to-wee, to-wee, to-wee. In the breeding season the shafts of the middle pair of tail feathers of the cock grow out beyond the rest. These projecting, bristle-like feathers render the cock easy ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar

... was an agent for brushes, and he opened his box and showed me the greatest assortment of big and little brushes: bristle brushes, broom brushes, yarn brushes, wire brushes, brushes for man and brushes for beast, brushes of every conceivable size and shape that ever I saw in all my life. He had out one of his especial pets—he called it his "leader"—and feeling it familiarly ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... own opinion was nothing against Miss 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 you know this ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... roads to be traversed now were constructed on projecting slopes above rivers and torrents, affluents of the Yangtze, and cross a region upon which the troubled appearance of the mountains that bristle over it stamps the impress of a severe kind of beauty. Such roads would not be tolerated in any country but China—I doubt if any but the ancient Chinese could have had the patience to build them. One could not walk with comfort; it was an impossible task. Far away over ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... it. The driver, in chauffeur's livery, sat immobile, controlling the car, his worldly-wise, blase face like a mask. Two men were in the tonneau. One of them leaned forward, looking at the crowd, a square-jawed man, clean-shaven but for the bristle of a silver mustache beneath an aggressive nose, above a firm hard mouth and determined chin. The mintage of the East was stamped upon his features. He was a man accustomed to sway, if not to lead. His companion was as plainly as eastern product, but his manner was ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... skin was white and he was lithe and tense and muscular. Breeding showed in him as it shows in the muscles and conformation of a race-horse. When he was dried he threw down the makeshift towel and combed his shock of brown hair with his fingers. Now that the bristle of beard was off his face ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... "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 which ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... Some are still seen, prone on the brim of an incipient hole, with their trenching-tools in their fleshless hands or looking at them with the cavernous hollows where shrivel the entrails of eyes. The ground is so full of dead that the earth-falls uncover places that bristle with feet, with half-clothed skeletons, and with ossuaries of skulls placed side by side on the steep slope ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... bristle around. A collection of them has just been in visiting the sick officers. We had a big Good Friday service at 11, and there is another at 6 P.M. The Bishop of London is coming ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous

... evening, drawn to the atmosphere into which events had plunged him, he dined at the Traders' Club. As he passed one of the tables Silas Trimmer leered up at him with the circular smile, which, bisected by a row of yellow teeth and hooded with a bristle of stubby mustache, had now come to aggravate him almost past endurance. To-night it made him approach his dinner with vexation, and, failing to find the man he had sought, he finished hastily. As he went out, Silas Trimmer, though looking straight in his direction, did not seem to ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... Ainslie Grey ascended the steps of his house, the hall-door opened and a dapper gentleman stepped briskly out. He was somewhat sallow in the face, with dark, beady eyes, and a short, black beard with an aggressive bristle. Thought and work had left their traces upon his face, but he moved with the brisk activity of a man who had not yet bade good-bye to ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... 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 and ran out of the open door; and he was ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory

... diatribe against modernism by a champion of lost causes, an exacerbated lover of the "Singular Virgin and fecund Mother of the Verb." His argument, as I understand it, is the consensus gentium theory applied to the Virgin Mary. In defence of this thesis, the book has been made to bristle with quotations; they stand out like quills upon the porcupine, ready to impale the adventurous sceptic. Pliny and Virgil and the Druids and Balaam's Ass are invoked as foretelling Her birth; the Old Testament—that venerable sufferer, as Huxley called it—is twisted ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... hoofs that told one unmistakably to look out for his rear, and out of the bushes burst the mother, her eyes red as a wild pig's, and the long hair standing straight up along her back in a terrifying bristle. "Stand not upon the order of your mogging, but mog at once—eeeunh! unh!" she grunted; and I turned otter instantly and took to the lake, diving as soon as the depth allowed and swimming under water to escape the old fury's attention. There was little need of fine tactics, however, as I found ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long

... the legs and all flesh containing the outer skin until the skin is removed, with a coarse towel. Now, with a cleaver, chop the shell into five pieces and place in scalding water for five minutes. Remove from hot water. Use the knife to peel off the skin and bristle from the shell. Now lay the meat and shell in cold water for one and one-half hours. You now have white and green turtle ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson

... 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 ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... his sister Maud was also experiencing mental disquietude of no mean order. Everything had gone wrong with Maud. Barely a mile separated her from George, that essential link in her chain of communication with Geoffrey Raymond; but so thickly did it bristle with obstacles and dangers that it might have been a mile of No Man's Land. Twice, since the occasion when the discovery of Lord Marshmoreton at the cottage had caused her to abandon her purpose of going in and explaining everything to George, had she attempted ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... are times when I don't know you. We are talking quietly and suddenly you bristle like a bottle-brush; or we happen to be playing amicably together and I bark behind your back—bow, wow-wow!—just for fun; then,—one doesn't know why, perhaps because my nose has grazed the long hairs on your legs you're so ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette

... in her heart a man of 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." Frequent representations of Eabani are found upon the monuments; he has ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... nothing in either The Lay of the Last Minstrel or Marmion to compare for natural dramatic force with the situation in The Lady of the Lake when Roderick Dhu whistles for his clansmen to appear, and the astonished Fitz-James sees the lonely mountain side suddenly bristle with tartans and spears; and the fight which follows at the ford is a real fight, in a sense not at all to be applied to the tournaments and other conventional encounters of the earlier poems. Even where Scott still clung to supernatural devices to help ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... there is a shaking in the bushes, and Sauvage and his bledgemates bristle and stand up and show their teeth. Out comes Mamselle Eosalin with a scream to the ...
— The Skeleton On Round Island - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... the old Uzcoque appeared to curl and bristle with fury at the insulting imputations of the Proveditore. For a moment he seemed about to fly at his interlocutor; his fingers clutched and tore the straw upon which he was sitting; and his fetters clanked as his whole frame shook with rage. After a brief pause, and by a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... described by Touchstone: he was not damned, like the poor shepherd: he had been to court. He had also learnt good and gallant manners. He recognised many of his frequent visiters, and if any female among them was laid hold of, in his presence, he would bristle with rage, strike the bars of his cage with tremendous force, and violently gnash his teeth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various

... sufferings were not forgotten; his once sweet temper was a trifle 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

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

... point a few {198} degrees warmer than the skin, and a few spots will be found that give the sensation of warmth, these being the warmth spots. Use a sharp point, like that of a needle or of a sharp bristle, pressing it moderately against the skin, and you get at most points simply the sensation of contact, but at quite a number of points a small, sharp pain sensation arises. These are the pain spots. Finally, if the skin ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... one's living in London. Every avenue is as much choked as the entrance to the pit at a popular theatre on a first night. And though it is said that we may always get a tooth-brush into a portmanteau however full it is, there comes a time when not even a tooth-brush bristle can be put there. I looked at London, wandered round it, spent all my money, and determined to go to sea again, this time in a steamer rather than in a "wind-jammer." With this notion in my mind I went down to Hull, whither a ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... hair seemed all a-bristle. Her black eyes flamed. Her dark face worked like a quicksand. Her skirts were wet to the waist. Her jacket was open at the top, as though she had wrenched at it in a fit of choking. Her strong bare throat throbbed convulsively. Her hands, half closed at her side, ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... and, leaving him gloating, he hurried away down the trail. Old Bunk was right, they had come there to get him, and there was no use playing into their hands; yet at thought of Slogger Meacham his hair began to bristle and he muttered half-formed threats. The Slogger had come to get him—and Dave Chatwourth was behind there, too—the whole district was dominated by their gang; but the times would change and with inrush of other men the jumpers would soon be out-numbered. It was better then ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... struck me as an exciting smoke," observed Bat Scanlon, from the opposite side of the table. "The tobacco, like most things from the Balkans, is a little unsettled; and the wild porker means battle with every bristle." ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... through the clutches of advocates, the talons of attorneys, and the claws of clerks. These vermin do not as yet infest the land. Every one here pleads his own cause. Our Themis is prompt, and she does not bristle with fees, costs, and charges.' The testimony of others, though not so rhetorically expressed, is enough to prove that both royal and seigneurial courts did their ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro

... rest of your skin is doing. Fortunately, your hair is growing from roots under the skin much in the same way as blades of grass grow from their roots; and, as it grows, it pushes up these scales from the surface of the scalp to where you can readily reach them with a good bristle brush. If they are not well brushed out, the dust and smoke from the air will mix with them, and the germs in the dust and smoke will breed in the mixture, and you will soon have "scurf" or dandruff on your head. So give at least ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson

... turn of mind flavoured by the inherited humour and sagacity of the sea. I don't know what the seaman of the future will be like. He may have to live all his days with a telephone tied up to his head and bristle all over with scientific antennae like a figure in a fantastic tale. But he will always be the man revealed to us lately, immutable in his slight variations like the closed path of this planet of ours on which he must ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... backs begin to bristle, When I shout aloud and whistle! How they kick at every lick That I give them with my stick! Oh, ...
— The Gold Thread - A Story for the Young • Norman MacLeod

... pecan, bud-moth and case-worm, obtain their food by biting off pieces of the leaves or other parts of the tree and swallowing the solid particles. On the other hand, a number of insects, such as the scales and plant-lice, obtain their food by thrusting their small, bristle-like sucking tubes into the tissues of the leaves and sucking out the juices contained in ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume

... architecture had not registered. To the left of the entrance has been fixed the ancient bas-relief, in white marble, of Homer; to the right, the polyglot Bible rears its seven heads. The hydra of the Romancero and some other hybrid forms, the Vedas and the Nibelungen bristle further on. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... been a cause of anxiety to their parents ever since they were instituted. The flightiness of the female temperament is very evident in those who have not arrived at the years which teach how to hide faults and frailties, and, therefore, indiscretions bristle from a young girl the way branches do ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

... artificial intellectual contortion. There is however, one study which is as yet almost wholly untouched by the scientific spirit—I mean the study of philosophy. Philosophers and the public imagine that the scientific spirit must pervade pages that bristle with allusions to ions, germ-plasms, and the eyes of shell-fish. But as the devil can quote Scripture, so the philosopher can quote science. The scientific spirit is not an affair of quotation, of externally acquired information, ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... large tail like a flag, and mewing kindly to greet her mistress. But when she saw me what a face she made. She flew on the hall table, and putting up her back till it almost lifted her feet from the ground, began to spit at me and bristle with rage. ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders

... hunter approaching, he will at first lie down, close his eyes, and keep as still as possible to escape notice; but should he find that the hunter is still coming on, say to within twenty paces from him, he will fly into a rage, show his fangs, bristle his hair, and get ready for a spring. The hunter usually takes a green stick about a yard long by two inches thick, and instead of striking a great, swinging blow with both hands, he holds the stick ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... him: as he stepped, A keen pang through his senses swept, For, pierced by the venomous bristle, his sight Saw gloom shroud the mountain, ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... 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 the black sky ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... promontory, mull; forehead, foreland[obs3]; point of land, mole, jetty, hummock, ledge, spur; naze[obs3], ness. V. be prominent &c. adj.; project, bulge, protrude, pout, bouge|[Fr], bunch; jut out, stand out, stick out, poke out; stick up, bristle up, start up, cock up, shoot up; swell over, hang over, bend over; beetle. render prominent &c. adj.; raise 307; emboss, chase. [become convex] belly out. Adj. convex, prominent, protuberant, projecting ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... France; but, at least, if she is sold, she is sold cheaper. We do not pass through the clutches of advocates, the talons of attorneys and the claws of clerks. These vermin do not infest Canada yet. Everybody pleads his own cause. Our Themis is prompt, and she does not bristle with fees, costs and charges. The judges have only four hundred francs a year—a great temptation to look for law in the bottom of the suitor's purse. Four hundred francs! Not enough to buy a cap and gown, so these gentry never wear them." [24] ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... are coming," said Martin, turning his head so that Foy caught sight of his face. It was transfigured, it was terrible. The great red beard seemed to bristle, the pale blue unshaded eyes rolled and glittered, they glittered like the blue steel of the sword Silence that wavered above them. In that dread instant of expectancy Foy remembered his vision of the morning. Lo! it was fulfilled, for before him stood Martin, the peaceful, ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... the corpus is not great by reason of haste or want of finish. He has recorded more than once how it was ever his habit to let his work be polished to the utmost before putting it in type. The citations with which his pages bristle proclaim him to be a reader almost as voracious and catholic as Burton; and Naude, with the watchfulness of the hostile critic in his heart and the bookworm's knowledge in his brain, would have been ready and able to convict him of quoting authors he had not read, if the least ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... Deborah, who grasped the situation as surely as they did, to note the bristling antipathy behind the careful politeness of their mutual regard. If it did not bristle under her immediate eye, ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... order, and the lines graven in his pale face express thought and study, while suggesting also an extreme love of sarcasm and a caustic, incredulous humor. His large and deep-set blue eyes seem to look at things only to criticise them, never to enjoy them, and his arched eyebrows bristle like defenses set up between the world with its interests on the one side and the inner man Balsamides on the other. Though he wears a heavy brown mustache, it is easy to see that underneath it his thin lips curl scornfully, and are drawn down at the extremities ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... inspiration, and in one letter he compares himself to the tiger who makes or misses his point in one spring. He ranked Pope first among English poets, yet he learnt nothing in that school; he pretended to undervalue Shakespeare, yet he must have had the plays by heart, for his letters bristle with quotations from them. His avowed taste in poetry is hard to reconcile with his own performances: his verse was rushing, irregular, audacious, yet he overpraises the smooth composition of Rogers; he dealt in heroic themes and passionate love-stories, yet ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... forts, and fortifications, to an extent which renders siege impossible! If you follow one of the streets which surround the town, at each step that you take, you find yourself face to face with a cannon. Gibraltar itself does not bristle more completely with mouths of fire. The inconvenience of these extended works is, that they enclose a vast radius, and demand to defend them, in case of attack, an enormous garrison; always difficult to maintain at a distance from the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... the hairs, two or three little bundles of muscle run up toward the surface of the skin. When these contract, they pull the root of the hair up toward the surface, causing the hair to stand erect, or "bristle," as we say. This is what makes the hair on a dog's or a cat's back stand up when he is angry; but the commonest use of the movement is, when animals are cold, to make their coats stand out so as to hold ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... his position to one foot, scratched his head. Somehow, this was not quite what he had expected. He had thought Dolly more changed about this flying business; and here she seemed—well, not so very much changed. Within him he felt something vaguely bristle. It was still bristling there the next morning, and gave to his voice a certain brusqueness when, kissing Dolly on the forehead after breakfast, he said: "Well, so ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... peculiar to this submerged region. The curious black umbrella-bird is entirely confined to it, as is also the little bristle-tailed manakin. Several monkeys visit it during the wet season, for the sake of its peculiar fruits; and here the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... distinguish a press of hackney-coachmen, who 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

... Prince Eitel, when at sight of Louis Raincy the blond hairs of his moustache would bristle like those of an angry cat, while Louis glowered a more sullen defiance. Only Miss Aline managed to stave off the storm, but even with her shepherding of the elements, it was bound to break ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... Cochise getting out of hand? All the time it's harder to hold him. He's beginning to bristle up even to you." ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... case there was his father—the Sinclair heritage—So all his fine dreams of helping Aruna amounted to this—that it was he who might be driven, in the end, to hurt her more than any of them. Life that looked such a straight-ahead business for most people, seemed to bristle with pitfalls and obstacles for him; all on account of the double heritage that was at once his pride, his inspiration, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... in the past few months, Mac Tavish, when he dipped his pen, stabbed pointed glances beyond the rail and curled his lips and made his whiskers bristle and continually looked as if he were going to bark; he kept ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... refused to be driven at all, and struggled and floundered as desperately as if he already had a vivid presentiment of the frying-pan, snapping viciously at my fingers whenever I undertook to lay hold of him. To add to the aggravating features of the case, he seemed to bristle all over with an inordinate and unreasonable quantity of sharp-pointed fins and spines, which must have been designed by nature as weapons of defence, since there were certainly more of them than any fish could ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... flooding the world with a radiance wondrous to behold; and blinking drowsily, I wondered what had waked me. Now as I gazed about me the place seemed all at once to take on an evil look, what with its steepy sides a-bristle with tangled vines and bushes and pierced here and there with black holes and fissures, and I shivered. The fire being low I, minded to replenish it, was groping for my fuel when I started and remained peering up at the cliff ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... said, "The boar Golden Bristle may not be judged as great a wonder as the spear Gungnir or the boat Skidbladnir. We must make something more wonderful still. Work the bellows as before, brother, and do not let the fire die down or blaze up ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum

... the Koran is unlawful, but it is being printed. All pictures of living objects are unlawful, but the Sultan is photographed, Abd el Kader is photographed, the "Sheikh ul Islam" is photographed. European shoes are unlawful because sewed with a swine's bristle, but Moslem Muftis strut about the streets in French gaiters, and the women of their harems tottle about in the most absurd ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... took refuge on the foothills of the mountains. But speed was more precious than safety. He passed Scolus, and found the village desolate, burned. No human being greeted him, only one or two starving dogs rushed forth to snap, bristle, and be chased away by a well-sent stone. Here and yonder in the fields were still the clusters of crows picking at carrion,—more tokens that Mardonius's Tartar raiders had done their work too well. Then at last, an hour or more ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... saw the big man lift his fist, and the person who was holding him ducked suddenly and ran for his life: the other folk got out of the way too, and the big man walked over to where he stood and stared into his face. His jaw was stuck out like the seat of a chair and his moustache was like a bristle of barbed wire. The young man said to him, "What the hell's wrong with you to go bashing a man for nothing at all?" and all of a sudden the big fellow turned and walked away. It was a grand fight altogether, said the youth, but ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... the most common of the birds depicted. Two species only seem to occur in the writings, the king vulture and the black vulture. The former is a large black and white bird with the head and the upper part of the neck unfeathered, except for numerous short, almost bristle-like plumules. These naked portions are often colored red and there is a large more or less squarish fleshy knob at the base of the upper ramus of the beak. This conspicuous protuberance has been seized upon as a characteristic ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen

... rounded, with the two eyes occupying a large part of the surface, and nearly meeting on the top of the head. Out of the forehead, so to speak, grow the long, delicate, hairy antennm (a), and just below arises the long beak which consists of the bristle-like maxillae (mx, with their palpi, mp) and mandibles (m), and the single hair-like labrum, these five bristle-like organs being laid in the hollowed labium (l). Thus massed into a single awl-like beak, the mosquito, without any apparent ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard

... enchanted potions) I was shut up in a pig-sty; and we perceived that Eurylochus, alone, had not the form of a swine; he, alone, escaped the proffered draught. And had he not escaped it, I should even, at this moment, have still been one of the bristle-clad animals; nor would Ulysses, having been informed by him of so direful a disaster, have come to Circe as {our} avenger. The Cyllenian peace-bearer had given him a white flower; the Gods above call it 'Moly;'[26] it is supported ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... an instant and startling change in Big Tom. The smile went from the bloodshot eyes, giving place to that white flash of rage. The heavy nose gave a quick twist. Every hair in the short beard seemed to bristle. "Now there's somebody in this room that's gittin' fresh," he observed; "and freshness from a kid is somethin' I can't stand. I don't mention no name, but! If it happens again"—he paused for emphasis—"I'll slap the fancy eyeglasses ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... confounded with the effects of time. The northern nations have not given to Italy that warlike aspect which Germany has preserved. It seems that the gentle soil of Ausonia was unable to support the fortifications and citadels which bristle in northern countries. Rarely is a Gothic edifice or a feudal castle to be met with here; and the monuments of the ancient Romans reign alone triumphant over Time, and the nations by whom they ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

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

... cease to revile the Chicago base-ball management when it transferred "King Kel" to the Boston club for the then unheard-of premium of $10,000. When the base-ball season was at its height his column would bristle with the proofs of his vivid interest in it. I have known it on one day to contain over a score of paragraphs relating to the national game, encouraging the home nine or lampooning the rival club with all the personal vivacity of a sporting reporter writing ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... no idle title, but your own, Then, now, and now for ever. For, behold, Ev'n as I speak, the mountain passes fill And bristle with the advancing soldiery That glitters in your rising glory, sir; And, at our signal, echo to our cry, 'Segismund, ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... he forgot all about them. Then his eyes fell on them, and a heat crept slowly into his veins as he looked. Slowly he began to resume his kingship. His eyes changed curiously, and a light, fiery and fearless, flamed in their depths. His mane began to bristle. ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... attached a coat of mail of very fine wire, which covers their shoulders. Notwithstanding these precautions, there are few who come out of these marshes without having their faces, necks, and hands covered with red spots. The atmosphere there seems to bristle with fine needles, and one would almost say that a knight's armor would not protect him against the darts of these dipterals. It is a dreary region, which man dearly disputes with tipulae, gnats, mosquitos, horse-flies, and millions of microscopic ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... wing-cased armour-clads—take up my defence and bear witness in my favour. Tell of the intimate terms on which I live with you, of the patience with which I observe you, of the care with which I record your actions. Your evidence is unanimous: yes, my pages, though they bristle not with hollow formulas nor learned smatterings, are the exact narrative of facts observed, neither more nor less; and whoso cares to question you in his turn will obtain ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... didn't feel half so big and strong and brave as he had a few minutes before. But it wouldn't do to let this stranger know it. Of course not! So, though he felt very small inside, Johnny made all his hair bristle up and ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess

... German words rumble and bristle with emphasis, "I am happy that assurance from me could so calm ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins

... run down by the early train, Whirl down with shriek and whistle, And feel the bluff North blow again, And mark the sprouting thistle Set up on waste patch of the lane Its green and tender bristle, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... have become the great travelers of the world. In India there are two American tourists for one of all other nationalities. The hotel registers bristle with U.S.A. addresses and the shops and hotels regard the American trade as being the most profitable. One desirable result of the American tendency to fare afield has been the steady improvement in hotel and railway accommodations in the ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... conversationally and ravish them with erect 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 this ability ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht

... 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 ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... frowns sullen on the throne it built. Another year, and who knows but the Earl of Warwick,—the beloved and the fearless, whose statesman-art alone hath severed from you the arms and aid of France, at whose lifted finger all England would bristle with armed men—may ride by the side of Margaret through the gates ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... red-brown, curved and sharp; when at rest they meet without crossing. The maxillary palpi are rather long, consisting of two cylindrical sections of equal length, the outer ending in a very short bristle. The jaws and the lower lip are not sufficiently visible to lend themselves to ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... idea of God as the banner of human unity and justice, and I have made some tentatives in that direction, but men, I perceive, have argued themselves mean and petty about religion. At the word "God" passions bristle. The word "God" does not unite men, it angers them. But I doubt if God cares greatly whether we call Him God or no. His service is the service of man. This double idea of the League of Free Nations, linked with ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells

... Germany. Nor is it probable that the ordinary German is going to survey the revised map of Africa with a happy sense of relief, or blame no one but himself for the vanished prosperity of 1914. That is asking too much of humanity. Unless I know nothing of Germany, Germany will bristle with "denkmals" to keep open all such sores. The dislike of Germany by the allied nations will be returned in the hostility of a thwarted and disappointed people. Not even the neutrals will be aloof from these hostilities and resentments. The world ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... I'se a heap 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

... put just then, and in Tregarthen's hearing, might have changed the whole current of this small history; for Tregarthen was a poor hand at dissimulation—or, rather, was incapable of it. But the sight of his back, as he turned away, caused Sir Caesar's eyebrows to bristle up yet ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch



Words linked to "Bristle" :   respond, brush, fiber, hair, have, bristly, fibre, bristle at, react, feature



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