prickly

prickle +‎ -y

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prickly (comparative pricklier, superlative prickliest)

1. Covered with sharp points.

   The prickly pear is a cactus; you have to peel it before eating it to remove the spines and the tough skin.

2. (figurative) Easily irritated.

   He has a prickly personality. He doesn't get along with people because he is easily set off.

3. (figurative) Difficult; complicated; hairy or thorny.

   It was a prickly situation.

   • 2021 March 27, Simon Hattenstone, quoting Charlotte Rampling, “Charlotte Rampling: ‘I am prickly. People who are prickly can’t be hurt any more’”, in The Guardian‎, →ISSN:

     People who are prickly can’t be hurt any more. They’ve had it. So we just have to be prickly to make sure nobody’s going to come in and grab us.

• (covered with sharp points): thorny, spiny

• prick

prickly (comparative more prickly, superlative most prickly)

1. In a prickly manner.
   • 2016, David Thomson, Biggest lesson of the 2016 Oscars? The Academy should be scrapped (in The Guardian, 3 March 2016)

     Striding across stage in his bright white jacket, his voice soaring and cracking – like Charlie Parker’s – he was nervous but prickly eloquent, caustic yet encouraging.

prickly (plural pricklies)

1. (colloquial) Something that gives a pricking sensation; a sharp object.
   • 2002, William A. Luckey, Long Ride to Nowhere, page 75:

     Below, way out on the flat, Blue had seen a light green that could be graze but up here was nothing 'cept all kinds of prickly bushes, and too many of them. Ground-spreading pricklies that reached out to jump at a horse's belly […]

   • 2016, Richard J. Sklba; Joseph Juknialis, Easter Fire: Fire Starters for the Easter Weekday Homily, page 113:

     Dad, I need to ride on your shoulders because the pricklies hurt my feet.