pettish
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of pettish
Explanation
If you stomp your foot angrily when the bakery is out of your favorite cupcake flavor, you're acting pettish, or like a little kid who's in a cranky mood. If you do nothing but complain in the emails you write your grandparents — about the weather, your friends, your family, and what you had for lunch — they may think of you as pettish. Pettish people are irritable and petulant. Some word experts believe there's a connection between the adjective pettish and being a pet, or a spoiled child.
Vocabulary lists containing pettish
The Secret Garden
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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The Borrowers
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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.
Harrumphing and sneering as the Primms’ pettish downstairs neighbor, Gelman grates.
From Seattle Times • Oct. 6, 2022
The $196 million trade pact was abruptly canceled by Peking in a pettish squabble about a Chinese trade delegation's right to fly the Red flag in Tokyo.
From Time Magazine Archive
Connolly's less agreeable qualities include a tone of pettish portentousness into which he falls when writing of philosophical or religious matters that he can taste but cannot fathom.
From Time Magazine Archive
Carousel sentimentalizes the redemptive power of parenthood for Billy, a pettish, self-pitying idler and punk whom Hayden plays with an early-Brando sneer.
From Time Magazine Archive
Yes, horribly,” he cried, in a pettish way.
From The Parson O' Dumford by Fenn, George Manville
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
