Crossword clues for feisty
feisty
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
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, with present participle of now-obsolete Middle English fysten, fisten "break wind" (mid-15c.), from Proto-Germanic *fistiz- "a fart," said to be from PIE *pezd- (see fart), but there are difficulties.\n
\nThe 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." Compare 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].
Wiktionary
a. 1 tenacious, energetic, spunky. 2 belligerent; prepared to stand and fight, especially in spite of relatively small stature or some other disadvantage. 3 Easily offended and ready to bicker.
WordNet
Usage examples of "feisty".
Brummel had never in his life seen sweet, seemingly vulnerable Mary Busche so feisty.
Environment counted for something and while this environment, plus their rigid training, made for warriors and feisty hunters, their lives were actually a little freer and easier than the lives of the code-controlled Earthites who titilled along.
Widow Splean, a feisty old Liten woman whom McHenry and Kebron were in the process of interviewing.
She and Richard Ferguson enjoyed teasing him about the feisty suffragette whenever they had the chance.
It should be feisty, hardheaded, strong-willed, fast-moving Faye he worried about.
Only during breeding season did the sociable flocks separate into pairs and the males behave like feisty gamecocks with former friends.
There was also a wildly successful genre of romance novels featuring implausible talent heroes who were capable of seducing beautiful, feisty female prisms and turning said prisms into love slaves.
Even before the onboard computer identified them as biologics, he knew they were sperm whales: females hosting a couple of calves, migrating south from Nova Scotia or even farther north to mating areas in the Bahamas, where some big, feisty males were doubtless waiting for them.
All eyes were on this man as with almost ritualistic earnestness, in the midst of much joking, laughing, clowning about of the players, he pitched underhand the dazzling-white softball to a figure crouched at bat-Sable Mills, herself-an energetic and feisty figure, yet not much of an athlete-Sable with her brassy hair newly cut in a virtual flattop, a wicked silver clamp on one ear, in black sleeveless sweater and matching jodhpurs that fitted her wiry body as if she'd been poured into them like melted wax.
Two feisty individuals and an over-imaginative disbarred judge are more than an Ontario ranch boy can handle.
Probably, thought Mirelle, Barnhill got feisty because his wife had taken a new lover whom Barnhill hadn't had time to identify.
And although a fly rod could never provide the same hot blood rush as a rifle, Lighthorse Simmons grew to enjoy yanking feisty little bluegills and largemouth bass from the creek.
A few months before becoming ex-mayor, Suarez made that infamous late-night sojourn to the home of a feisty Little Havana constituent who'd criticized him in a letter.
Now, I'm younger and feistier back then than I am now, and though it had started snowing before Halloween that year, now it was Thanksgiving and there was clean snow on the ground, fresh as anything, and I could see the buck's footprints.
He had mastered feistier beasts to the saddle, and he must-if he wished to Hold-prove equally capable at retraining.