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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Prickly \Prick"ly\, adjective Full of sharp points or prickles; armed or covered with prickles; as, a prickly shrub.
{Prickly heat} (Med.), a noncontagious cutaneous eruption of red pimples, attended with intense itching and tingling of the parts affected. It is due to inflammation of the sweat glands, and is often brought on by overheating the skin in hot weather.
{Prickly pear} (Bot.), a name given to several plants of the cactaceous genus {Opuntia}, American plants consisting of fleshy, leafless, usually flattened, and often prickly joints inserted upon each other. The sessile flowers have many petals and numerous stamens. The edible fruit is a large pear-shaped berry containing many flattish seeds. The common species of the Northern Atlantic States is {Opuntia vulgaris}. In the South and West are many others, and in tropical America more than a hundred more. {Opuntia vulgaris}, {Opuntia Ficus-Indica}, and {Opuntia Tuna} are abundantly introduced in the Mediterranean region, and {Opuntia Dillenii} has become common in India.
{Prickly pole} (Bot.), a West Indian palm ({Bactris Plumierana}), the slender trunk of which bears many rings of long black prickles.
{Prickly withe} (Bot.), a West Indian cactaceous plant ({Cereus triangularis}) having prickly, slender, climbing, triangular stems.
{Prickly rat} (Zo["o]l.), any one of several species of South American burrowing rodents belonging to {Ctenomys} and allied genera. The hair is usually intermingled with sharp spines.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
prickly
adjective
1: very irritable; "bristly exchanges between the White House and the press"; "he became prickly and spiteful"; "witty and waspish about his colleagues" [syn: {bristly}, {splenetic}, {waspish}]
2: having or covered with protective barbs or quills or spines or thorns or setae etc.; "a horse with a short bristly mane"; "bristly shrubs"; "burred fruits"; "setaceous whiskers" [syn: {barbed}, {barbellate}, {briary}, {briery}, {bristled}, {bristly}, {burred}, {burry}, {setose}, {setaceous}, {spiny}, {thorny}] [also: {prickliest}, {pricklier}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
98 Moby Thesaurus words for "prickly": acanaceous, acanthoid, aciculate, aculeate, aculeolate, agitable, allergic, anaphylactic, annoying, atingle, bad-tempered, barbed, bothersome, brambly, briery, bristly, cantankerous, complex, complicated, contentious, cranky, crawling, crawly, delicate, difficult, edgy, emotional, emotionally unstable, empathetic, empathic, eruptive, excitable, explosive, fractious, fretful, goosy, hard, high-mettled, high-spirited, high-strung, highly emotional, hyperesthetic, hyperpathic, hypersensitive, inflammable, intricate, irascible, irritable, itchy, knotty, mettlesome, miffy, muricate, nervous, nettlesome, overrefined, oversensible, oversensitive, overtender, passible, peevish, perturbable, pettish, petulant, pricking, prickling, pricky, refined, responsive, sensitive, setaceous, setose, short-tempered, skittish, snappish, spiculate, spiky, spinous, spiny, startlish, stinging, supersensitive, sympathetic, tactful, temperamental, tender, testy, tetchy, thin-skinned, thistly, thorny, ticklish, tingling, tingly, touchy, troublesome, volcanic, waspish
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