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Bristle vs Gristle - What's the difference?

bristle | gristle |

As nouns the difference between bristle and gristle

is that bristle is a stiff or coarse hair while gristle is cartilage; now especially: cartilage present, as a tough substance, in meat.

As a verb bristle

is to rise or stand erect, like bristles.

As a proper noun Bristle

is bristol, England (in imitation of the local dialect.

bristle

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • A stiff or coarse hair.
  • The hair or straws that make up a brush, broom, or similar item.

    • Derived terms

    *

    Verb

    (bristl)
  • To rise or stand erect, like bristles.
  • * Sir Walter Scott
    • His hair did bristle upon his head.
  • To appear as if covered with bristles; to have standing, thick and erect, like bristles.
  • * Thackeray
    • the hill of La Haye Sainte bristling with ten thousand bayonets
  • * Macaulay
    • ports bristling with thousands of masts
  • To be on one's guard or raise one's defenses; to react with fear, suspicion, or distance.
  • * Shakespeare
    • Now for the bare-picked bone of majesty / Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-22, volume=407, issue=8841, page=70, magazine=(The Economist)
    • , title= Engineers of a different kind , passage=Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers. Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets is only a small part of what leveraged buy-outs are about, they insist. Improving the workings of the businesses they take over is just as core to their calling, if not more so. Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster.}}
  • To fix a bristle to.
    • to bristle a thread

    Derived terms

    * bristling

    Anagrams

    * *

    gristle

    English

    Noun

  • Cartilage; cartilage present, as a tough substance, in meat.
  • * 1979 , (Monty Python), (Always Look on the Bright Side of Life)
    • When you're chewing on life's gristle
    Don't grumble, give a whistle
    And this'll help things turn out for the best...
  • (figuratively, from, obsolete scientific theory) Bone not yet hardened by age and hard work.
  • * 1849 , Herman Melville, ,
    • And it is a hard and cruel thing thus in early youth to taste beforehand the pangs which should be reserved for the stout time of manhood, when the gristle has become bone, and we stand up and fight out our lives, as a thing tried before and foreseen; for then we are veterans used to sieges and battles, and not green recruits, recoiling at the first shock of the encounter.
  • * 1859 , George Eliot, ,
    • Look at Adam through the rest of the day, as he stands on the scaffolding with the two-feet ruler in his hand, whistling low while he considers how a difficulty about a floor-joist or a window-frame is to be overcome; or as he pushes one of the younger workmen aside and takes his place in upheaving a weight of timber, saying, "Let alone, lad! Thee'st got too much gristle i' thy bones yet"; or as he fixes his keen black eyes on the motions of a workman on the other side of the room and warns him that his distances are not right.
  • * 1885 , Ada Sarah Ballin, ,
    • It. must be borne in mind that the bones of a young infant are little more than gristle , and are liable to bend, and so become deformed.
  • * 1896 , Arthur Conan Doyle, ,
    • "The young 'un will make his way," said Belcher, who had come across to us. "He's more a sparrer than a fighter just at present, but when his gristle sets he'll take on anything on the list.

    Derived terms

    * in the gristle * gristled * gristliness * gristly

    References

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    Anagrams

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