nettler

Noun

nettler (plural nettlers)

1. One who nettles; a vexatious or provoking individual or organization.
   • But theſe are the Nettlers, theſe are the babbing Bookes that tell, though not halfe your fellows feats.1641, John Milton, Animadversions upon the Remonstrants Defence against Smectymnuus; republished in A Complete Collection of the Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous Works of John Milton, […]...
   • The husband is a mildly stuffy blueblood who somewhat nettles his high-style-model wife, but she is a brisk, free-wheeling creature who is a bit of a nettler herself.1968, Filmfacts - Volume 11, page 347
2. An irritation or provocation.
   • That thrust you gave me, Tims, has prov'd a nettler— Your stab turns out, what I have been, — a Settler!1820, John Hamilton Reynolds, The Fancy: a Selection from the Poetical Remains of the Late Peter Corcoran
   • Let us remember that these spiked nettlers of life are part of our discipline. Life would get nauseating if it were all honey.1917 October, “When Things Go Wrong”, in Woodworkers Record, volume 8, number 1
3. On who applies nettles to another person (as a prank, punishment, or as part of a ritual).
   • So far as we know, neither Walsingham nor Burghley ever recongnized their portraits as Cosmosophos and Piloplutos in Lodge's Catharos...A Nettle for Nice Noses. but it is safe to say that neither the Secretary nor the Lord Treasurer allowed their noses to be nettled with impunity if the nettler...1937, Eleanor Grace Clark, Elizabethan Fustian, page 108
   • Nettled noses can be no delight to the nettled and ought to be no delight to the nettlers.1952, Geoffrey Grigson, Gardenage: Or, The Plants of Ninhursaga, page 69
4. A plant or animal that has poisonous stinging hairs, spikes or tendrils.
   • The first description of the latter cnidae in that species was made by Uchida in 1929 (Uchida, 1929). Both animals are rather heavy nettlers for human divers and bathers.1973, Kyōto Daigaku. Seto Rinkai Jikkenjo, Publications of the Seto Marine Biological Laboratory, page 686
   • Nettlers are the mild-mannered poison peddlers of the world. Nettlers are passive stingers.They include stinging plants, some are appropriately called nettles, jellyfish and some caterpillars.1992, F. Tom Turpin, The Insect Appreciation Digest, page 70