teasel

A teasel is a tall, prickly plant with cone-shaped flower heads, often with purple flowers. Its dried heads have stiff, hooked parts that were once used to brush wool cloth and raise the nap, the soft fuzzy surface on fabric. In that older textile sense, the word can mean either the plant itself or the dried flower head used for this job.

The word is related to "tease" in its older sense of pulling fibers apart or combing them. Today, people most often use "teasel" for the plant, especially in nature writing or when talking about older cloth-making.

The word "teasel" lives in both the natural world and the history of cloth-making. First, it names a tall, prickly plant, usually from the genus Dipsacus, with spiny stems and oval or cone-shaped flower heads. These heads are covered with stiff, hooked bracts, and that is what made the plant useful for centuries.

Before modern textile tools became common, workers used the dried head of the fuller's teasel to raise the nap on woolen cloth. In other words, they brushed the surface so it became softer and slightly fuzzy. Because of this, "teasel" can mean the plant, the dried flower head, or even a tool used for the same purpose. There is also a verb, "to teasel," meaning to treat cloth in this way.

The word is closely related to "tease" in its older sense of pulling apart or combing fibers. In modern English, though, "teasel" is mainly a plant word. You are most likely to see it in gardening, botany, countryside writing, or discussions of traditional textile work.