nettler

noun

1. One who nettles; a vexatious or provoking individual or organization.

   “But theſe are the Nettlers, theſe are the babbing Bookes that tell, though not halfe your fellows feats.”

   “The husband is a mildly stuffy blueblood who somewhat nettles his high-style-model wife, but she is a brisk, free-wheeling creature who is a bit of a nettler herself.”

   “But for all the archivist energies and pack-rat instincts of its founder, the Church League of America never became much more than a filing system turned noisy, a nettler of liberals, a voice that suggested that the ecumenical forces could not alone own the day.”

2. An irritation or provocation.

   “That thrust you gave me, Tims, has prov'd a nettler— Your stab turns out, what I have been, — a Settler!”

   “Let us remember that these spiked nettlers of life are part of our discipline. Life would get nauseating if it were all honey.”

   “It will hardly surprise you to learn that frustrations about boy friends and dating plans are common teen-age nettlers.”

3. On who applies nettles to another person (as a prank, punishment, or as part of a ritual).

   “So far as we know, neither Walsingham nor Burghley ever recongnized their portraits as Cosmosophos and Piloplutos in Lodge's Catharos...A Nettle for Nice Noses. but it is safe to say that neither the Secretary nor the Lord Treasurer allowed their noses to be nettled with impunity if the nettler ever came within their proper reach.”

   “Nettled noses can be no delight to the nettled and ought to be no delight to the nettlers.”

   “Yost, (personal communication) reports for the Waorani that nettling, among other things is used to pass power or certain abilities from one person ( the nettler ) to another. It is never, as Westerners often think, a cruel form of punishment.”

4. A plant or animal that has poisonous stinging hairs, spikes or tendrils.

   “The first description of the latter cnidae in that species was made by Uchida in 1929 (Uchida, 1929). Both animals are rather heavy nettlers for human divers and bathers.”

   “Nettlers are the mild-mannered poison peddlers of the world. Nettlers are passive stingers.They include stinging plants, some are appropriately called nettles, jellyfish and some caterpillars.”

   “Fortunately, there are only a few jellyfish in the North Sea which are painfully nettlers, but you should always be careful not to touch unknown cnidarians.”