prickly

comparative pricklier · superlative prickliest

1. Covered with sharp points.

   The prickly pear is a cactus; you have to peel it before eating it to remove the spines and the tough skin.

   Synonyms: thorny, spiny

2. figurativelyEasily irritated; thorny.

   He has a prickly personality. He doesn't get along with people because he is easily set off.

3. figurativelyDifficult; complicated; hairy or thorny.

   It was a prickly situation.

   1 more example

   People who are prickly can’t be hurt any more. They’ve had it. So we just have to be prickly to make sure nobody’s going to come in and grab us.

   2021 March 27, Simon Hattenstone, quoting Charlotte Rampling, “Charlotte Rampling: ‘I am prickly. People who are prickly can’t be hurt any more’”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

comparative more prickly · superlative most prickly

1. In a prickly manner.

   Striding across stage in his bright white jacket, his voice soaring and cracking – like Charlie Parker’s – he was nervous but prickly eloquent, caustic yet encouraging.

   2016 March 3, David Thomson, The Guardian

plural pricklies

1. colloquialSomething that gives a pricking sensation; a sharp object.

   Dad, I need to ride on your shoulders because the pricklies hurt my feet.

   2016, Richard J. Sklba, Joseph Juknialis, Easter Fire: Fire Starters for the Easter Weekday Homily, page 113

   1 more example

   Below, way out on the flat, Blue had seen a light green that could be graze but up here was nothing 'cept all kinds of prickly bushes, and too many of them. Ground-spreading pricklies that reached out to jump at a horse's belly […]

   2002, William A. Luckey, Long Ride to Nowhere, page 75

2. USeducationA person who favours formal, structured, organized settings.

   2 more examples

   Planned variation was based on systematically applying different educational approaches developed by academic experts, each of whom was to become a "sponsor" of a single type of program – from highly structured classroom models, sometimes called "pricklies," to open classrooms and more exploratory environments, dubbed "gooeys."

   1976 February 15, Pamela Moore, “Follow Through—Biggest Social Science Study Ever …”, in Daniel S[heldon] Greenberg, editor, Science & Government Report: The Independent Bulletin of Science Policy, volume IV, number 3, Washington, D.C.: Science & Government Report, Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 4, column 2

   Alan Watts says that these two types may be named the "prickly" people and the "gooey" people. The pricklies, he says, the Marthas, are tough-minded, rigorous, and precise and like to stress differences and divisions between things. The gooeys, the Marys, are tender-minded romanticists who love wide generalizations and grand syntheses.

   1979, Robert C. Wright, “Reminiscing and Romancing in Mid-America: Rumes, Romances, Stories, and Poems”, in Frederick Manfred, Boston, Mass.: Twayne Publishers, G[arrison] K[ent] Hall & Co., →ISBN, page 99

   Antonyms: gooey