bristle

Etymology

From Middle English bristil, bristel, brustel, from Old English bristl, *brystl, *byrstel, from Proto-West Germanic *burstilu, diminutive of Proto-West Germanic *bursti, from Proto-Germanic *burstiz (compare Dutch borstel, German Borste (“boar's bristle”), Icelandic burst), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰr̥stís (compare Middle Irish brostaid (“to goad, spur”), Latin fastīgium (“top”), Polish barszcz (“hogweed”)), equivalent to brust + -le.

noun

1. A stiff or coarse hair, usually and especially on a nonhuman mammal.
   the bristles of a pig
2. A chaeta: an analogous filament on arthropods, annelids, or other animals.
3. The hairs or other filaments that make up a brush, broom, or similar item, typically made from plant cellulose, animal hairs, or synthetic polymers.

verb

1. To rise or stand erect, like bristles.
   He sat down with his elbows upon the desk, his gorilla hands clasped together, his beard bristling forward, and his big grey eyes, half-covered by his drooping lids, fixed benignly upon me. 1929, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Disintegration Machine
2. To abound, to have an abundance of something, especially something jutting out.
   Kieran Tierney did not want to risk a challenge on Pulisic, who darted on to the ball with far greater purpose, and the dink over Emi Martínez bristled with composure. 1 August 2020, David Hytner, “Aubameyang at the double as Arsenal turn tables on Chelsea to win FA Cup”, in The Guardian
3. (with at) To be on one's guard or raise one's defenses; to react with fear, suspicion, or distance.
   The employees bristled at the prospect of working through the holidays.
   Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers. Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets is only a small part of what leveraged buy-outs are about, they insist. Improving the workings of the businesses they take over is just as core to their calling, if not more so. Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster. 2013-06-22, “Engineers of a different kind”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 70
   If only the industry could be honest and explain why it has been forced, owing to government policies, to increase fares over the quarter century since privatisation. Instead, it is defensive and clearly bristles with annoyance when someone merely states the facts. May 5 2021, Barry Doe, “The Independent has a better grasp than GWR's spokesman”, in RAIL, number 930, page 58
4. To fix a bristle to.
   to bristle a thread