(Also as two words.) Forms: see SWEET a. and BRIER sb.1 A species of rose, the Eglantine, Rosa rubiginosa (and some other species, as R. micracantha), having strong hooked prickles, pink single flowers, and small aromatic leaves; freq. cultivated in gardens.
1538. Turner, Libellus, Cynorrhodos … swete brere aut Eglentyne. Ibid. (1548), Names Herbes, 33. Cynorrhodus named of the latines Rosa canina, is called in englishe a swete brere or an Eglentyne.
1625. Bacon, Ess., Gardens (Arb.), 562. Some Thickets, made onely of Sweet-Briar, and Honnysuckle, and some Wilde Vine amongst.
a. 1631. Donne, Epicedes, Elegie on the L. C., 9. If a sweet briar, climbe up by a tree.
1774. G. White, Selborne, To Pennant, 2 Sept. The fly-catcher … builds in a vine, or a sweet-brier.
1796. Withering, Brit. Plants (ed. 3), II. 467. In the Garden Sweet-briar the leaves [are] beset above with very short hairs, oval-eggshaped.
1802. Bloomfield, Rur. Tales, Dolly, 45. The sweet-brier op’d its pink-ey’d rose, And gave its fragrance to the gale.
allusively. 1599. Massinger, etc., Old Law, II. ii. 2 Court. O sweet precious bud of beauty! Troth, she smells over all the house, methinks. 1 Court. The sweetbriar’s but a counterfeit to her—It does exceed you only in the prickle…, lady.
1638. Ford, Fancies, II. ii. Bill, pigeon, do; thou’st be my cat-a-mountain, and I thy sweet-briar, honey.
attrib. 1796. Withering, Brit. Plants (ed. 3), II. 467. Rosa … eglanteria…. Sweet-briar Rose.
1857. G. Bird’s Urin. Deposits (ed. 5), 236. The sweet-briar odour was frequently present.
1884. Miller, Plant-n., Bedeguar, or Sweet Briar Sponge, a gall found on the Sweet Briar and other Roses.
1900. H. Sutcliffe, Shameless Wayne, xiii. 178–9. Shall I never again get down to the meadows and the nightingales and the sweetbriar hedges under which the violets grow?
Hence Sweet-briery a., full of sweet-brier.
1828. Moore, ‘We may roam through this world,’ ii. The wild sweet-briery fence.
