Word.ws English Dictionary

bristling up

bristling up is the present participle and gerund of bristle up.

Meaning of bristle up

Verb

bristle up (third-person singular simple present bristles up, present participle bristling up, simple past and past participle bristled up)

  1. (intransitive) To become bristly; to stand on end
    • Her hairs bristled up.
  2. (intransitive) To become irate; to flare up
    • He bristled up when they made a joke about his heritage.

Questions about bristling up

What is bristling up the present participle and gerund of?
Bristling up is the present participle and gerund of bristle up.

Words near bristling up in the dictionary

  1. bristleworms
  2. bristlier
  3. bristliest
  4. bristliness
  5. bristling
  6. bristling up
  7. bristlingly
  8. bristlings
  9. bristly
  10. bristly bellflower
  11. bristly foxtail

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bristling up (page history and authors); bristle up (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “bristling up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bristling_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.