PRICKLY

adj. 1 bristly, thorny, brambly, spiny, barbed, briery, spinous, spiky, Technical setaceous, setose, acanthoid, aciculate, aculeate, muricate, spiculate Dad's face is all prickly when he hasn't shaved 2 tingling, stinging, pricking, prickling, itchy, crawly, crawling The squeak of the chalk on the blackboard gives me a prickly feeling 3 touchy, irritable, petulant, cantankerous, testy, waspish, bad-tempered, peevish, fractious, short-tempered, curmudgeonly, Colloq cranky Moira gets a bit prickly if you ask her why she married Noel 4 nettlesome, thorny, ticklish, touchy, troublesome, intricate, complicated, complex, knotty, hard, difficult, contentious The prickly problem of how to pay for the university must still be faced