WordWeb Online

1. Having or covered with protective barbs or quills or spines or thorns or setae etc.
   "a horse with a short bristly mane"; "bristly shrubs";
   - barbed, barbellate, briary, briery, bristled, burred, burry, prickly, setose, setaceous, spiny, thorny
    
2. Very irritable
   "bristly exchanges between the White House and the press";
   - prickly, splenetic, waspish

Derived forms: bristlier, bristliest

See also: armed, ill-natured