Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • etc. See brier, briery, etc.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Same as brier.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The white heath, Erica arborea.
  • noun A pipe made from the root of this plant.
  • noun Any thorny plant, now especially a wild rose.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun Eurasian rose with prickly stems and fragrant leaves and bright pink flowers followed by scarlet hips
  • noun a pipe made from the root (briarroot) of the tree heath
  • noun evergreen treelike Mediterranean shrub having fragrant white flowers in large terminal panicles and hard woody roots used to make tobacco pipes
  • noun a very prickly woody vine of the eastern United States growing in tangled masses having tough round stems with shiny leathery leaves and small greenish flowers followed by clusters of inedible shiny black berries

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English brær.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French bruyère, assimilated with Etymology 1, above.

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Examples

  • The rosa multiflora--the rambling rose, what I call the briar rose, because it is clearly the killer rose that protected Sleeping Beauty's castle for a century--is sending its arms across the path in the undiscovered country.

    busy thoughts asakiyume 2006

  • Finaly Brad says (calm and cool) "She's lieing right there" (points to spot 10ft. from blood on road in briar thicket).

    Tell me your funniest hunting stories. 2009

  • Finaly Brad says (calm and cool) "She's lieing right there" (points to spot 10ft. from blood on road in briar thicket).

    Tell me your funniest hunting stories. 2009

  • To me she seems pretty much below the radar, and seen to have been pushed into the background aka the briar patch.

    If Republicans take the House in 2010, a possible Obama pivot to center? 2010

  • In England they are called briar-root pipes, briar being a corruption of the French word _bruyère_, signifying heath.

    The South of France—East Half C. B. Black

  • Mixed with the blue of the smoke from his briar was the deeper azure of a spirited monologue in which Grayson was engaged.

    The Mucker Edgar Rice Burroughs 1912

  • Hips are preferred; at least, the fruit of the briar is the first of the two to disappear.

    Round About a Great Estate Richard Jefferies 1867

  • "Spam detection software, running on the system 'briar', has identified this incoming email as possible spam" if the email is spam.

    townx - Comments 2009

  • Such an ethics thicket is exactly the kind of briar patch Republicans would love to be thrown into.

    Latest Articles 2009

  • The 26 inch barrel would hang on every briar, limb, and vine in the woods and it balenced well forward of the action.

    This is kind of random, but do you think a sniper rifle make a good hunting gun? 2009

Comments

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  • "The next morning my ears, neck, shoulders and back looked as if I'd spent the night wrestling with thirty-three kittens in a briar patch crisscrossed with barbed wire during a hailstorm."

    - 'The Dice Man', Luke Rhinehart.

    February 4, 2008