prickly

Adjective

• 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
    

• very irritable
  • bristly exchanges between the White House and the press
    
  • he became prickly and spiteful
    
  • witty and waspish about his colleagues
    

Related words

• Synonyms: 
  bristly , splenetic , waspish