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Pettish   Listen
Pettish

adjective
1.
Easily irritated or annoyed.  Synonyms: cranky, fractious, irritable, nettlesome, peckish, peevish, petulant, scratchy, techy, testy, tetchy.  "Not the least nettlesome of his countrymen"



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"Pettish" Quotes from Famous Books



... Hilda," said Zillah, instantly appeased; "I'm always pettish; but you won't mind, will you? ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... hand, she's doo to begin shootin' me up herse'f if I don't show more passionate anxiety about leadin' her to the altar. It's then, not seein' why the old gent should go entertainin' notions ag'in me, an' deemin' mebby that when he blazes away that time he's merely pettish and don't really mean said bullet none, that ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... mankind, and inadvertently touched upon the absurdity of supposing there could be any superiority, of man over man, except that which genius and virtue gave. Sir Arthur did not approve the doctrine, and was pettish. I perhaps was warmed, by a latent sense of my own situation, and exclaimed—'Oh! How many noble hearts are groaning, at this instant, under the oppression of these prejudices! Hearts that groan, not because they suffer, but because they are denied ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... upon me like a pettish child. "Oh, to the devil with your stumbling-blocks, John Ireton! You are always for holding back. By heaven! I'll swear you have no drop of lover's blood in ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... the way out of the library across the hall. Errington followed him in silence. He knocked at the door of his wife's room,—in response to her "Come in!" they both entered. She was alone, reclining on a sofa, reading,—she started up with a pettish exclamation at sight of her husband, but observing who it was that came with him, she stood mute, the color rushing to her cheeks with surprise and something of fear. Yet she endeavored to smile, and returned with her usual ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... to be kind to me, and you are cruel; for when I ask for love, you give me jewels, books, or flowers, as you would give a pettish child a toy, and go away as if you were weary of me. Oh, it is not right, Sir! and I cannot, no, I will not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... harmonious numbers. I love him much better than the hot-headed son of Peleus, who bullied his general, cried for his mistress, and so on. It is true, the excellence of the Iliad does not depend upon his merit or dignity; but I wish, nevertheless, that Homer had chosen a hero somewhat less pettish and less fantastic: a perfect hero is chimerical and unnatural, and consequently uninstructive; but it is also true, that while the epic hero ought to be drawn with the infirmities that are the lot of humanity, he ought never to be represented as extremely ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... nothing should appear, and that he would discourage any Parliamentary attempt to elicit them. Now that Durham's Report has come forth, containing strictures on Head's conduct, he assumes a right to publish, for his own vindication, and he has asserted this in a pettish letter to Melbourne; whereas, if he had again asked for permission on this express ground, it would not have been refused. The motto of this Government, however, seems ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... ears, and the smoke of burning streets, slaughter, and exile forced Dino to look to the stranger. There is something strangely touching in the dry, passionless way in which he tracks Henry of Luxemburg from city to city, the fire of his real longing only breaking out here and there in pettish outbursts at each obstacle the Emperor finds. The weary waiting came to nothing. Dino leaves us still looking for Henry's coming; Dante tells us of the death that dashed all hope to the ground. Even in the hour of his despair the poet could console himself by setting his "divino Arrigo" in the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... in the hotel chamber in Ciudad Real—that forlornest of royal cities—her face wore the pettish look of one who, having passed through great events, having tasted of great passions and moved amid the machinery of life and death, finds the ordinary routine of existence intolerably irksome. Many faces wear such a ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman

... you," replied the renegade. "Caneri, you know how firmly I am devoted to the Moorish cause; why then was I insulted when it was only to advance the interests of that cause I spoke? But let that pass; I am no pettish boy to quarrel with my associates for a word uttered intemperately in ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... different costumes which she managed to don in two days filled him with amazement and gave her person an ever-varying charm and interest. She appeared always accompanied by a very placid-looking and portly woman, who was evidently her mother, and a tall, cadaverous sick man, whose indifferent and pettish attitude toward her seemed to indicate that he was either a brother or an uncle, for Ramon felt sure that she was not married. She acquired no male attendants, but sat most of the time very properly, if a little restlessly, with her two companions. Once or twice Ramon felt ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson

... went up to them, rather timidly. "I want to tell you how sorry I am, Mr. Froehling," she said conciliatingly. Polly had a kind heart, if a pettish manner. "What a pity you didn't take out your certificate when Manfred ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... went to my father's thinking to have met with my cozen John Holcroft, but he came not, but to my great grief I found my father and mother in a great deal of discontent one with another, and indeed my mother is grown now so pettish that I know not how my father is able to bear with it. I did talk to her so as did not indeed become me, but I could not help it, she being so unsufferably foolish and simple, so that my father, poor man, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... stone hall of Llangarth, Daurn-ap-Tavis, the old Welsh Wolf lay dying. Outside was the night and a sullen gale whose winds came moaning down the hills and clung about the house with little bodeful whispers that grew to long-drawn eerie wails, while pettish rain-squalls spent their spite in futile gusts on door ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... when from that invisible weakness, little evils become great, the temper loses its equanimity, the spirits their elasticity, we scarcely know wherefore, and we reproach ourselves, and add to our uneasiness by thinking we are becoming pettish and ill-tempered, enervated and repining; we dare not confess such feelings, for our looks proclaim not failing health, and who would believe us? when the very struggle for cheerfulness fills the eye with tears, the heart with heaviness, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar

... John Constantine," was the answer, in a weary, almost pettish tone. "God knows I have more reason to be grateful to you than to any ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... susceptible; excitable &c 825; thin-skinned &c (sensitive) 822; fretful, fidgety; on the fret. hasty, overhasty, quick, warm, hot, testy, touchy, techy^, tetchy; like touchwood, like tinder; huffy, pettish, petulant; waspish, snappish, peppery, fiery, passionate, choleric, shrewish, sudden and quick in quarrel [As You Like It]. querulous, captious, moodish^; quarrelsome, contentious, disputatious; pugnacious &c (bellicose) 720; cantankerous, exceptious^; restiff &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget



Words linked to "Pettish" :   ill-natured



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