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A small, fine brush of hair or bristles used by painters for laying on colors. With subtile pencil depainted was this storie. Chaucer.

Some unusual appendage about the pistil, as the bottle-shaped body in the sedges, and the bristles or scales in some other genera of the Sedge family, or Cyperaceæ.

Bearing a single slender bristle, or hair.

Of or pertaining to the rictus; as, rictal bristles.

To form a ridge of; to furnish with a ridge or ridges; to make into a ridge or ridges. Bristles ranged like those that ridge the back Of chafed wild boars. Milton.

Somewhat rigid or stiff; as, a rigidulous bristle.

Rough with bristles or hair; shaggy. "The rugged Russian bear." Shak.

Any slender, more or less rigid, bristlelike organ or part; as the hairs of a caterpillar, the slender spines of a crustacean, the hairlike processes of a protozoan, the bristles or stiff hairs on the leaves of some plants, or the pedicel of the capsule of a moss.

Set with, or consisting of, bristles; bristly; as, a stiff, setaceous tail.

Producing, or having one or more, bristles.

Covered with bristles; having or bearing a seta or setæ; setiferous; as, setigerous glands; a setigerous segment of an annelid; specifically (Bot.), tipped with a bristle.

Thickly set with bristles or bristly hairs.

A small, short hair or bristle; a small seta.

Having small bristles or setæ.

outward. [Obs.] To sprunt up, to draw one's self up suddenly, as in anger or defiance; to bristle up. [Local, U.S.]

To stand out; to project; to bristle. [Obs.] Makest my blood cold, and my hair to stare. Shak. Take off all the staring straws and jags in the hive. Mortimer.

To become stiff or stiffer, in any sense of the adjective. Like bristles rose my stiffening hair. Dryden. The tender soil then stiffening by degrees. Dryden. Some souls we see, Grow hard and stiffen with adversity. Dryden.

Set with stiff, slender bristles.

Set with stiff, straight bristles; hispid; as, a strigose leaf.

Short and thick; short and strong, as bristles.