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prickle

UK/ˈpɹɪkəl/US/ˈpɹɪkəl/
nounB2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — prickly sits at #10,202neutral

Other forms: prickles

A prickle is a small sharp point on a leaf or stem. The prickles on a holly leaf.

It grows from the surface rather than from the wood, which is what separates it from a thorn. A rose has prickles rather than thorns, whatever everybody calls them.

Alex Abair · CC BY 4.0

Definitions of prickle

  1. 1nounprickleA small sharp point on a leaf or stem.B2

    “One prickle went straight through the glove.”

prickle is a point.

Where it comes from

Old English pricel comes from the same root as prick.

  1. Proto-West Germanic

    *prikislī

  2. Old English

    pricel

  3. Middle English

    prykkyl

  4. English, today

    prickle

Built from

  • pricle · Old English — a prickle, sharp point, bit
  • *prikil · Proto-West Germanic — prickle

From Middle English prykkyl, prykyl, from Old English pricel, pricels, pricle (“a prickle, sharp point, bit”), from a conflation of Proto-West Germanic prikislī and prikil (“prickle”). by surface analysis, en + prick + le. Cognate with West Frisian prikel (“goad, prickle”), Dutch prikkel (“sting, prickle, stimulus”), German Low German Prekel (“wooden stick, poker”), stq prikkelje (“to propel, spur on, goad”). Old English period.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Trees & Flowers

Practise this word

prickle in the wild

  • The stratum spinosum (or spinous layer/prickle cell layer) is a layer of the epidermis found between the stratum granulosum and stratum basale.

    Stratum spinosum

  • Spinous cells, or prickle cells, are keratin producing epidermal cells owing their prickly appearance to their numerous intracellular connections.

    Spinous cell

  • The first prickle protein was identified in Drosophila as a planar cell polarity protein.

    Prickle (protein)

  • Vertebrate prickle-1 was first found as a rat protein that binds to a transcription factor, neuron-restrictive silencer factor (NRSF).

    Prickle (protein)

  • I stopped breathing and felt my scalp prickle.

    The Poet's Echo

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the pricel family

prickly

prickle — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others