BRIAR

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does briar mean? 

• BRIAR (noun)
  The noun BRIAR has 4 senses:

1. Eurasian rose with prickly stems and fragrant leaves and bright pink flowers followed by scarlet hips

2. a very prickly woody vine of the eastern United States growing in tangled masses having tough round stems with shiny leathery leaves and small greenish flowers followed by clusters of inedible shiny black berries

3. evergreen treelike Mediterranean shrub having fragrant white flowers in large terminal panicles and hard woody roots used to make tobacco pipes

4. a pipe made from the root (briarroot) of the tree heath

  Familiarity information: BRIAR used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BRIAR (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Eurasian rose with prickly stems and fragrant leaves and bright pink flowers followed by scarlet hips

Classified under:

Nouns denoting plants

Synonyms:

briar; brier; eglantine; Rosa eglanteria; sweetbriar; sweetbrier

Hypernyms ("briar" is a kind of...):

rose; rosebush (any of many shrubs of the genus Rosa that bear roses)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A very prickly woody vine of the eastern United States growing in tangled masses having tough round stems with shiny leathery leaves and small greenish flowers followed by clusters of inedible shiny black berries

Classified under:

Nouns denoting plants

Synonyms:

briar; brier; bullbrier; catbrier; greenbrier; horse-brier; horse brier; Smilax rotundifolia

Hypernyms ("briar" is a kind of...):

vine (a plant with a weak stem that derives support from climbing, twining, or creeping along a surface)

Holonyms ("briar" is a member of...):

genus Smilax; Smilax (sometimes placed in Smilacaceae)

Derivation:

briary (having or covered with protective barbs or quills or spines or thorns or setae etc.)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Evergreen treelike Mediterranean shrub having fragrant white flowers in large terminal panicles and hard woody roots used to make tobacco pipes

Classified under:

Nouns denoting plants

Synonyms:

briar; brier; Erica arborea; tree heath

Hypernyms ("briar" is a kind of...):

erica; true heath (any plant of the genus Erica)

Meronyms (parts of "briar"):

briarroot (hard woody root of the briar Erica arborea)

Sense 4

Meaning:

A pipe made from the root (briarroot) of the tree heath

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

briar; briar pipe

Hypernyms ("briar" is a kind of...):

pipe; tobacco pipe (a tube with a small bowl at one end; used for smoking tobacco)

 Context examples 

This suggests that if you had a challenge (or will have one in early February), you can find your way out of the briar patch by calmly talking things through.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

Then the maiden changed herself into a beautiful flower which stood in the midst of a briar hedge, and her sweetheart Roland into a fiddler.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Summerlee was sitting up and stuffing some tobacco into his old briar.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A nice old briar with a good long stem of what the tobacconists call amber.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Sweet-briar and southernwood, jasmine, pink, and rose have long been yielding their evening sacrifice of incense: this new scent is neither of shrub nor flower; it is—I know it well—it is Mr. Rochester's cigar.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an old briar pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless, with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The feeling with which I used to watch the tramps, as they came into the town on those wet evenings, at dusk, and limped past, with their bundles drooping over their shoulders at the ends of sticks, came freshly back to me; fraught, as then, with the smell of damp earth, and wet leaves and briar, and the sensation of the very airs that blew upon me in my own toilsome journey.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

And Summerlee, too, there he was with his short briar between his thin moustache and his gray goat's-beard, his worn face protruded in eager debate as he queried all Challenger's propositions.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I passed a tall briar, shooting leafy and flowery branches across the path; I see the narrow stile with stone steps; and I see—Mr. Rochester sitting there, a book and a pencil in his hand; he is writing.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Among his minor peculiarities are that he is careless as to his attire, unclean in his person, exceedingly absent-minded in his habits, and addicted to smoking a short briar pipe, which is seldom out of his mouth.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)