How to Use bristly in a Sentence

bristly

adjective
  • Long, a stout man with a bristly gray mustache, was impressed.
    — Time, 15 Feb. 2018
  • Price has had a bristly relationship with media members in the past.
    — Jeremy Woo, SI.com, 1 July 2017
  • Among them were bundles of baleen, a bristly filtration system found in the mouths of Mysticeti whales.
    — Jacob Brogan, Smithsonian, 29 Sep. 2017
  • Their typically bristly fur is peppered with shades of brown and gray, with a white underbelly.
    — Marina Watts, PEOPLE, 16 Jan. 2026
  • Herewith, some facts and insights gleaned from a long lunch with the adorable, bristly-haired, Lillian-Hoban-drawing-like actor.
    — David Kamp, VanityFair.com, 19 June 2017
  • Often, as a bonus, a librarian or teacher will lean in to give Daisy a kiss on her bristly snout, to general glee from the young audience.
    — Nora McGreevy, BostonGlobe.com, 22 Aug. 2019
  • For the uninitiated, the retro, some may say dated term, refers to a bristly line of abdominal hair leaning towards the pubic region.
    — Liana Satenstein, Vogue, 16 Dec. 2017
  • The film’s lively dynamics owe much to the bristly nature of nearly every relationship and interaction in the film.
    — Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter, 31 Aug. 2019
  • One side of the brush from two-thirds down is completely bristle-less, while the top third of the brush contains several bristly spokes, similar in design to an open Venus flytrap.
    — Kathleen Hou, The Cut, 1 Aug. 2017
  • During the summer ski jumping season when competitors slide down ceramic or porcelain tracks and land on bristly plastic mats, the team tried to adjust to the new ski suit dimensions.
    — Brian Melley, Chicago Tribune, 23 Jan. 2026
  • No plants, no animals, certainly nothing that even compared to the great diversity of life in the sea, which teemed with trilobites, crustaceans, bristly worms, and soft squid-like creatures.
    — Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic, 12 July 2017
  • Even the very beautiful giant leopard moth’s bristly caterpillar feeds on this plant, probably sequestering the plant’s toxins for its own protection.
    — Dave Taft, New York Times, 5 Oct. 2017
  • Not only were the bones in excellent condition, but so were the rock and soft tissue, which included wing membranes, bristly body feathers, gizzard stones, and even the contents of its last meal in its stomach.
    — David Grossman, Popular Mechanics, 8 May 2019
  • And my father—lovable but imposing, a strapping six feet three inches tall with a thick, bristly mustache and a rumbling Sergeant Schultz accent that frightened my friends half to death—loved to tell stories.
    — CBS News, 5 Dec. 2025
  • But the larger forces at play—the tug of populism in a brutally competitive political environment and the rise of bristly nativism in a country that increasingly sees itself as a rival to China—will likely affect other foreign companies as well.
    — Sadanand Dhume, WSJ, 10 Jan. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'bristly.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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