bratty
Americanadjective
Usage
What does bratty mean? Bratty describes someone or something considered to be ill-mannered, rude, impolite, or overly irritatingly. The term is often used to be hurtful or judgemental of the one being labeled bratty. The person using the term usually disapproves of someone’s actions, whether or not those actions are breaking social conventions. While children are most often the ones labeled as brats and being bratty, adults and animals can also be labeled as brats and being bratty. You might even hear objects, such as a computer or a car, being called bratty when it isn’t working as expected. Brattiness is sometimes associated with rebellion or indecency, particularly in regards to children. Sometimes, you’ll hear someone call themselves bratty to make fun of themselves or to apologize for something they did. Example: My bratty computer keeps shutting down for no reason!
Etymology
Origin of bratty
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“I’m really excited to wear the sacred bratty curls and the hallowed hoop skirt,” Alaska said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 30, 2026
“She is loud, bratty, confident and powerful,” Espinosa says.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 22, 2026
“I don’t want to sound bratty because I am on an island, but we plan for one vacation once a year,” she said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 6, 2026
Co-produced by Charli XCX collaborators AG Cook and Danny L Harle, it couldn't sound less bratty if it tried.
From BBC ● Dec. 20, 2025
She told me about her bratty little brother; I told her about my bratty little sister.
From "Maybe He Just Likes You" by Barbara Dee
The past couple of weeks have also been cluttered with background noise more in keeping with Grande’s younger, brattier, doughnut-licking days than with her recent role as a sympathetic and inspiring survivor.
From Slate ● Feb. 8, 2019
And so when I am here, there's very little outside mitigation happening, so I tend to be way brattier and more ridiculous.
From The Verge ● Nov. 12, 2015
The new Peter, unhaunted and largely conscience-free, is Indy plus Han Solo; and Guardians is a jauntier, far brattier Star Wars.
From Time ● Aug. 1, 2014
And the band’s cover of Tears for Fears’s “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” was smart, comprehending that its lyrics were always far brattier than its arrangement.
From New York Times ● Jan. 11, 2010
Though more than once, in my brattiest moments, I had wondered whether it would be more helpful not to have money for the wedding, and therefore to have no wedding.
From New York Times ● Jan. 21, 2022
Victorian London’s brattiest wit, Wilde once remarked, of Dickens’s “The Old Curiosity Shop,” that “one must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.”
From Washington Post ● Oct. 15, 2018
Plus, that would be the only appropriate time to use the brattiest phrase ever: Wait till my father hears about this.
From "Aru Shah and the End of Time" by Roshani Chokshi
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
