Nettle meaning

Noun: nettle

Pronunciation: (ne-t(u)l)

Nettle meaning: Any of numerous plants having stinging hairs that cause skin irritation on contact (especially Urtica dioca)

Verb: nettle

Nettle meaning:

• Cause annoyance or to disturb
• Sting with or as with nettles and cause a stinging pain.

Synonyms: urticate, byte, sting, annoy, bother, irritate

Quotations: Davis Ogilvy – Leaders grasp nettles.

Ralph Waldo Emerson – Better to be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.

Thornton Wilder – The comic spirit is given to us in order that we may analyze, weigh, and clarify things in us which nettle us, or which we are outgrowing, or trying to reshape.

Oliver Cromwell – Weeds and nettles, briers and thorns, have thriven under your shadow, dis-settlement and division, discontentment and dissatisfaction, together with real dangers to the whole.

Francis Douce – Sir, my friend John Baynes used to say that the man who published a book without an index ought to be damned ten miles beyond Hell, where the Devil could not get for stinging nettles.

Sample sentences:

1. Mosquitoes buzzing in my ear really nettles me.
2. He decided to grasp the nettle and try to solve the problem himself.
3. He is really wise who is nettled at nothing.
4. From what we see, the sea nettles seem to be concentrated in the northern end of Barnegat Bay.
5. The world’s a nettle. Disturb it, it stings. Grasp it firmly, it stings not.
6. He who is afraid of every nettle should not piss in the grass.
7. The more I think about the nettle argument, the more it makes me laugh. This country’s awash with nettles. Butterflies that eat them are not in any difficulty at all.
8. No one can liberate you, for no one has bound you; you hold on to the nettle of worldly pleasures and you weep for pain. The kite is pursued by the crows so long as it carries the fish in its beak, it twists and turns in the sky trying to last and it drops the fish. That moment it is free. So give up the attachment to the senses; then grief and worry can harass you no more.
9. Love is like dew that falls on both nettles and lilies.
10. Tender-handed stroke a nettle, and it stings you for your pains; Grasp it like a man of mettle, and it soft as silk remains.