BRIER • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Brier

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/brˈaɪər/ Listen

noun

Briar, Brier n.

1.

A plant with a slender woody stem bearing stout prickles; especially, species of Rosa, Rubus, and Smilax.

2.

Fig.: Anything sharp or unpleasant to the feelings. "The thorns and briers of reproof."

Brier root, the root of the southern Smilax laurifolia and Smilax Walteri; used for tobacco pipes. See also 2nd brier.

Cat brier, Green brier, several species of Smilax (Smilax rotundifolia, etc.)

Sweet brier (Rosa rubiginosa). See Sweetbrier.

Yellow brier, the Rosa Eglantina.

Brier n.

1.

The white heath Erica arborea.

2.

A smoking pipe made of the root of the brier (1). Note: Brierroot seems to have been used formerly as a term meaning root of the Smilax laurifolia and is now defined as root of the Erica arborea. Not clear when this changed. PJC.

See images of 'Brier'

Etymology of 'Brier'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Brier" Quotes from Famous Books

... was slow and painful. Dangling brier vines drew blood from arms and face, and sharp thorns repeatedly lacerated hands and knees. At each move forward he had to pause and remove the dead branches and twigs from his path lest their cracking should betray him ...

— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... queer little garden and puzzling to a stranger, the few flowers being put at a disadvantage by so much greenery; but the discovery was soon made that Mrs. Todd was an ardent lover of herbs, both wild and tame, and the sea-breezes blew into the low end-window of the house laden with not only sweet-brier and sweet-mary, but balm and sage and borage and mint, wormwood and southernwood. If Mrs. Todd had occasion to step into the far corner of her herb plot, she trod heavily upon thyme, and made its fragrant presence known with all the rest. ...

— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett

... close at hand. At that instant the stone I had put faith in failed me basely and rolled: one foot went in, a dead twig caught my hair, part of my dress remained with the sharp end of a broken branch, I came to one knee (but not in a devotional spirit); I struck the ground with one hand and a brier-bush with the other, but I did not drop my glass, and I reached my ...

— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... through these set the sun, so that on the hottest days the garden was in sufficient shadow by the time the morning's work was done. There was a little grass-plot, large enough for a basket-chair and a rug. There was a hedge of Penzance sweet-brier opposite the backdoor and the window at which Langholm wrote, and yet this hedge broke down in the very nick and place to give the lucky writer a long glimpse across a green valley, with dim woods upon the opposite hill. And then there were the roses, planted by the last cottager—a ...

— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... blew three blasts upon his horn; His men did make reply, And came all quickly to his call, Through brake and brier ...

— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson

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