2. To fix by the point; to attach or hang by puncturing; as,
to prick a knife into a board. --Sir I. Newton.
The cooks prick it [a slice] on a prong of iron.
--Sandys.
3. To mark or denote by a puncture; to designate by pricking;
to choose; to mark; -- sometimes with off.
Some who are pricked for sheriffs. --Bacon.
Let the soldiers for duty be carefully pricked off.
--Sir W.
Scott.
Those many, then, shall die: their names are
pricked. --Shak.
4. To mark the outline of by puncturing; to trace or form by
pricking; to mark by punctured dots; as, to prick a
pattern for embroidery; to prick the notes of a musical
composition. --Cowper.
5. To ride or guide with spurs; to spur; to goad; to incite;
to urge on; -- sometimes with on, or off.
Who pricketh his blind horse over the fallows.
--Chaucer.
The season pricketh every gentle heart. --Chaucer.
My duty pricks me on to utter that. --Shak.
6. To affect with sharp pain; to sting, as with remorse. ``I
was pricked with some reproof.'' --Tennyson.
Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their
heart. --Acts ii. 37.
7. To make sharp; to erect into a point; to raise, as
something pointed; -- said especially of the ears of an
animal, as a horse or dog; and usually followed by up; --
hence, to prick up the ears, to listen sharply; to have
the attention and interest strongly engaged. ``The courser
. . . pricks up his ears.'' --Dryden.
8. To render acid or pungent. [Obs.] --Hudibras.
9. To dress; to prink; -- usually with up. [Obs.]
10. (Naut)
(a) To run a middle seam through, as the cloth of a sail.
(b) To trace on a chart, as a ship's course.
11. (Far.)
(a) To drive a nail into (a horse's foot), so as to cause
lameness.
(b) To nick.
Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary.
--Shak.
It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
--Acts ix. 5.
2. The act of pricking, or the sensation of being pricked; a
sharp, stinging pain; figuratively, remorse. ``The pricks
of conscience.'' --A. Tucker.
3. A mark made by a pointed instrument; a puncture; a point.
Hence:
(a) A point or mark on the dial, noting the hour. [Obs.]
``The prick of noon.'' --Shak.
(b) The point on a target at which an archer aims; the
mark; the pin. ``They that shooten nearest the
prick.'' --Spenser.
(c) A mark denoting degree; degree; pitch. [Obs.] ``To
prick of highest praise forth to advance.'' --Spenser.
(d) A mathematical point; -- regularly used in old English
translations of Euclid.
(e) The footprint of a hare. [Obs.]
4. (Naut.) A small roll; as, a prick of spun yarn; a prick of
tobacco.
2. To spur onward; to ride on horseback. --Milton.
A gentle knight was pricking on the plain.
--Spenser.
3. To become sharp or acid; to turn sour, as wine.
4. To aim at a point or mark. --Hawkins.