Other forms: bristles, bristling, bristled
To bristle is to stiffen with anger, as hair does. Bristle at the suggestion, bristling with rage, he bristled.
The literal reflex is real in animals — hair standing up makes a threatened creature look larger, and humans keep the reflex as goosebumps with nothing left to raise. Bristling with means densely covered: bristling with cameras. Note bristle the noun, meaning a stiff hair on a brush.
1verbbristleTo stiffen with anger.
“He bristled when the journalist suggested he had lied.”
2verbdenselyTo be densely covered with something.
“The roof of the embassy bristled with aerials and satellite dishes.”
bristle is a stiffening.
Old English brystl means a stiff hair, from a Germanic root. Brush and burst are relatives.
Proto-West Germanic
*burstilu
Old English
bristl
Middle English
bristil
English, today
bristle
From Middle English bristil, bristel, brustel, from Old English bristl, byrst, 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 mga brostaid (“to goad, spur”), Latin fastīgium (“top”), Polish barszcz (“hogweed”)).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA