Other forms: briars
A briar is a prickly wild shrub, especially a wild rose. A briar patch, tangled briars, briar roses.
It is the thorny scrambling growth that closes over neglected ground — bramble, dog rose and their relatives — and briar patch is the standard image for somewhere impenetrable. Sleeping Beauty is Briar Rose in the German tale. Note the spelling variant brier; and that a briar pipe is made from the root burl of a Mediterranean heath, which is an unrelated word entirely.
1nounbriarA prickly wild shrub, especially a wild rose.
“Her sleeve caught on a briar as she pushed through the hedge.”
briar is a thorny shrub.
Also accepted in games: brier
Old English brer meant a briar or bramble, of unknown earlier origin. The pipe-making briar is a separate word from French bruyère, heather.
Old English
brēr
Middle English
brere
English, today
briar
Built from
From Middle English brere, from Old English brēr [Old Mercian], brǣr (“briar, bramble”); further origin unknown, perhaps related to Old French bruiere (“heather”) (French bruyère). Compare Old Norse brǫrr (“briar”), whence Icelandic brörr.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA