snippy
Americanadjective
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sharp or curt, especially in a supercilious or haughty way; impertinent.
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scrappy or fragmentary.
adjective
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scrappy; fragmentary
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informal fault-finding
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dialect mean; stingy
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of snippy
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:
"He comes over as snippy and as someone who's got something to hide, which is never a good look."
From Barron's ● Jul. 6, 2026
Perhaps your friend was experiencing some anxiety about the day, which resulted in her being snippy with you.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 28, 2025
Instead, the Rangers head coach was was short, snippy and sombre.
From BBC ● Sep. 26, 2025
Lily is vain and snippy and about as convincingly English as if the only research into her character was a season of “The Great British Bake Off.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 7, 2025
I didn’t know why I was being so snippy.
From "Moon Over Manifest" by Clare Vanderpool
And customers might be snippier than usual these days, too.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 5, 2021
As long as the sender wasn’t too obviously insane, I would reply – and the snippier the email, the jollier my tone, until I reached a kind of ringing, Julie Andrews high cheer.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 5, 2017
The conversation grew snippier as one effort after another failed, and the clock ticked down.
From New York Times ● Jul. 2, 2014
Leng becomes even snippier when she realizes that Terry and Jiale are bonding.
From Washington Post
I checked my e-mail, reading the backlog of letters from my mother, getting snippier as they progressed to the present.
From "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer
Elvira, Mrs. Brackett, Desire Peasly and the rest gave him the snippiest of bows when they met and whispered and giggled behind his back.
From Fair Harbor by Joseph Crosby Lincoln
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.
