brier¹

 

or briar, name sometimes given any thorny plant, more specifically the sweetbrier, and the greenbrier. French brier, or brierroot, is a name for the root of the European white heath so widely used in the manufacture of smoking pipes.

Brier or briar is a common name for a number of unrelated thicket-forming thorny plants, including species in the genera Rosa, Rubus and Smilax.

Brier or Briar may also refer to:

Sports

• Tim Hortons Brier (or simply "The Brier"), the Canadian men's curling championship

Place names

• Briar, Missouri, in Ripley County
• Brier, Washington, in Snohomish County

Surnames

• Kathy Brier, an American actor and singer
• Richard Briers, a British actor

In fiction

• Briar Moss, from the Circle of Magic and Circle Opens quartets by Tamora Pierce
• The Briar King, a novel by Greg Keyes

Ethnic Slur

• Briar, term used in the U.S. Midwest, especially Ohio, for Appalachian migrants from Kentucky and West Virginia. These migrants, seeking work in Midwestern industries, were generally considered unwelcome, therefore the analogy to a thorny weed.

Mathematics

Brier score, a probability-related measure

See also

• Briar wood, is wood from the root of Erica arborea, used for making smoking pipes.
• Briar Patch, a disambiguation page

Donate to Wikimedia