pricky, a. Now dial.
(ˈprɪkɪ)
[f. prick n. + -y.]
Furnished with pricks or spines; prickly.
| 1548 Pricky Sperage [see prick n. 12]. 1578 Lyte Dodoens iv. xxvii. 485 The whiche beareth rough and prickie buttons. 1601 Holland Pliny xix. iii. II. 9 A prickie stalke it [Madder] hath of the owne. Ibid. 10 Prickie moreover it [Soap-wort] is like a thorne. [1684 Banks' Alb. Queen Epil., But Nolens-Volens, Pricky must appear.] 1903 Eng. Dial. Dict. cites it from Scotland to Kent. |
b. Comb. pricky-back or pricky-back urchin, pricky urchin, dial. the hedgehog.
| 1796 W. Marshall Yorks. (ed. 2) II. 337 Pricky Urchin;..the hedge hog. 1855 Robinson Whitby Gloss., Prick-a-back urchin, the prickly hedge-hog. 1863 Atkinson Stanton Grange (1864) 219 Next I kenned 'twere a prickyback. |