nettle

in a sentence

grouped by contextual meaning

Stay on the trail in that area to avoid nettles and ticks.

…wine, Three of us are killers, waiting bidden in line. Choose, unless you wish to stay here forevermore, To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four: First, however slyly the poison tries to hide You will always find some on nettle wine's left side; Second, different are those who stand at either end, But if you would move onward, neither is your friend; Third, as you see clearly, all are different size, Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their…  (source) J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, 1997

Then, using the loader, he lowered a thousand-gallon tank into the pit and buried it with a shovel, carefully planting nettles and sow thistle in the freshly tossed dirt so they would grow and conceal the tank.  (source) Tara Westover, Educated, 2018

for the congested passages you made a paste of boiled flour and nettles, wrapped it in a rag, and slapped it, sizzling, on the chest.  (source) Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes, 1996

By any chance, is it nettle?†  (source) Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow, 2016

Half an hour later, cold, and moving carefully on the tracks, fully aware of his entire body, his face, his mouth, his eyes stuffed with blackness, his ears stuffed with sound, his legs prickled with burrs and nettles, he saw the fire ahead.  (source) Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, 1953

He put the paperweight down on the ground that had once been a nettle-patch, placed it in the place that he estimated her head would have been, and pausing only to look at his handiwork for a moment, he went through the railings and made his way, rather less gingerly, back up the hill.†  (source) Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book, 2008

There were just nettles and thistles and weeds and half-bricks and lumps of stone.  (source) David Almond, Skellig, 1998

Holly grabbed the remains of a nettle smoothie from the cooler and drank it in the tunnels.†  (source) Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl, 2001

The worst time was July—then they shredded nettles into the pot.  (source) Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, 1962

"We could get robbed blind," Nettle agreed.†  (source) Ian McEwan, Atonement, 2001

Nettles make the best greens, but have little tiny hairs on them that sting you all over when you're picking.  (source) Forest Carter, Education of Little Tree, 1976

My mother brewed us scotch tea, strong, with milk, the way she used to when I was tomboying around and someone would push me in the nettle patch or I'd fall off my bicycle.†  (source) Stephen King, Carrie, 1974

"Well, then, to end the matter at once," said Goodman Brown, considerably nettled, "there is my wife, Faith."  (source) Nathanial Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown, 1835

"I Don't go looking for trouble," said Harry, nettled.†  (source) J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 1999

His scorn of commerce — invigorating to me — nettled a lot of the more vocal kids in Honors English.†  (source) Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch, 2013

My tone nettled him.†  (source) Megan Whalen Turner, The Thief, 1996

And because the mainland police couldn't collect Martin's body until the seas calmed, the townspeople were left with the nettlesome question of what to do with his body.†  (source) Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, 2011

"Of course not," Ullman said, nettled.†  (source) Stephen King, The Shining, 1977

That doesn't happen often in red-light districts, any more than farmers kill producing assets such as good milk cows, but from time to time a prostitute becomes so nettlesome that the owners kill her as a warning to the other girls.†  (source) Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky, 2009

I've never heard of that before," Alec said, nettled.†  (source) Cassandra Clare, City of Ashes, 2008

The flagon of mulled wine that Satin delivered helped them settle the more nettlesome points.†  (source) George R. R. Martin, A Dance With Dragons, 2011

As I feared it would, my lack of "cooperation" nettled the driver.†  (source) John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me, 1961

He was a physician and a teacher and a practicing politician, so nettlesome in opposition to Germany's imperial ambitions that Bismarck once challenged him to a duel.†  (source) Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains, 2003

But at the moment, his words nettled her.†  (source) Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains, 2003

The prison authorities refused permission for me to go, which nettled the nurses, and as a result, they decided to hold their party in my room, insisting they could not have their party without me.†  (source) Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, 1994