Prickly \Prick"ly\, a.
Full of sharp points or prickles; armed or covered with
prickles; as, a prickly shrub.
[1913 Webster]
Prickly heat (Med.), a noncontagious cutaneous eruption of
red pimples, attended with intense itching and tingling of
the parts affected. It is due to inflammation of the sweat
glands, and is often brought on by overheating the skin in
hot weather.
Prickly pear (Bot.), a name given to several plants of the
cactaceous genus Opuntia, American plants consisting of
fleshy, leafless, usually flattened, and often prickly
joints inserted upon each other. The sessile flowers have
many petals and numerous stamens. The edible fruit is a
large pear-shaped berry containing many flattish seeds.
The common species of the Northern Atlantic States is
Opuntia vulgaris. In the South and West are many others,
and in tropical America more than a hundred more. Opuntia
vulgaris, Opuntia Ficus-Indica, and Opuntia Tuna are
abundantly introduced in the Mediterranean region, and
Opuntia Dillenii has become common in India.
Prickly pole (Bot.), a West Indian palm ({Bactris
Plumierana), the slender trunk of which bears many rings
of long black prickles.
Prickly withe (Bot.), a West Indian cactaceous plant
({Cereus triangularis) having prickly, slender, climbing,
triangular stems.
Prickly rat (Zool.), any one of several species of South
American burrowing rodents belonging to Ctenomys and
allied genera. The hair is usually intermingled with sharp
spines.
[1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
prickly
adj 1: very irritable; "bristly exchanges between the White House
and the press"; "he became prickly and spiteful";
"witty and waspish about his colleagues" [syn: bristly,
splenetic, waspish]
2: having or covered with protective barbs or quills or spines
or thorns or setae etc.; "a horse with a short bristly
mane"; "bristly shrubs"; "burred fruits"; "setaceous
whiskers" [syn: barbed, barbellate, briary, briery,
bristled, bristly, burred, burry, setose, setaceous,
spiny, thorny]
[also: prickliest, pricklier]
WordNet (r) 2.0
98 Moby Thesaurus words for "prickly":
acanaceous, acanthoid, aciculate, aculeate, aculeolate, agitable,
allergic, anaphylactic, annoying, atingle, bad-tempered, barbed,
bothersome, brambly, briery, bristly, cantankerous, complex,
complicated, contentious, cranky, crawling, crawly, delicate,
difficult, edgy, emotional, emotionally unstable, empathetic,
empathic, eruptive, excitable, explosive, fractious, fretful,
goosy, hard, high-mettled, high-spirited, high-strung,
highly emotional, hyperesthetic, hyperpathic, hypersensitive,
inflammable, intricate, irascible, irritable, itchy, knotty,
mettlesome, miffy, muricate, nervous, nettlesome, overrefined,
oversensible, oversensitive, overtender, passible, peevish,
perturbable, pettish, petulant, pricking, prickling, pricky,
refined, responsive, sensitive, setaceous, setose, short-tempered,
skittish, snappish, spiculate, spiky, spinous, spiny, startlish,
stinging, supersensitive, sympathetic, tactful, temperamental,
tender, testy, tetchy, thin-skinned, thistly, thorny, ticklish,
tingling, tingly, touchy, troublesome, volcanic, waspish
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
barbed, barbellate, briary, briery, bristled, bristly, burred, burry, pricklier, prickliest, setaceous, setose, spiny, splenetic, thorny, waspish
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