feisty
- full of animation, energy, or courage; spirited; spunky; plucky: The champion is faced with a feisty challenger.
- ill-tempered; pugnacious.
- troublesome; difficult: feisty legal problems.
Origin of feisty
Examples from the Web for feistiness
Contemporary Examples
If only Huntsman had shown some of that feistiness on stage.
Does Mitt Romney have Chris Christie to thank for his feistiness?
Here was the feistiness that likely could have made him the victor had his name been on the ballot.
feisty
- lively, resilient, and self-reliant
- US and Canadian frisky
- US and Canadian irritable
Word Origin
Word Origin and History for feistiness
feisty
adj.
1896, "aggressive, exuberant, touchy," American English, with -y (2) + feist "small dog," earlier fice, fist (American English, 1805); short for fysting curre "stinking cur," attested from 1520s, from Middle English fysten, fisten "break wind" (mid-15c.); related to Old English fisting "stink," from Proto-Germanic *fistiz- "a fart," said to be from PIE *pezd- (see fart), but there are difficulties.
The 1811 slang dictionary defines fice as "a small windy escape backwards, more obvious to the nose than ears; frequently by old ladies charged on their lap-dogs." Cf. also Danish fise "to blow, to fart," and obsolete English aske-fise, "fire-tender," literally "ash-blower" (early 15c.), from an unrecorded Norse source, used in Middle English for a kind of bellows, but originally "a term of reproach among northern nations for an unwarlike fellow who stayed at home in the chimney corner" [OED].