英和和英

発音

形容詞

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.

2. (figurative) Easily irritated.

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

3. (figurative) Difficult; complicated; hairy or thorny.

   It was a prickly situation.

   • 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:

     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.

同意語

• (covered with sharp points): thorny, spiny

派生語

参考

• prick

副詞

prickly (comparative more prickly, superlative most prickly)

1. In a prickly manner.
   • 2016 March 3, David Thomson, The Guardian‎:

     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.

名詞

prickly (plural pricklies)

1. (colloquial) Something that gives a pricking sensation; a sharp object.
   • 2002, William A. Luckey, Long Ride to Nowhere, page 75:

     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 […]

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

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

2. (US, chiefly education, psychology) A person who favours formal, structured, organized settings.

   Antonym: gooey

   • 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:

     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."

   • 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:

     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.

派生語

• cold prickly