What is "petulance"

Usage examples of "petulance".

He was not as tall as I am, with longish black hair and a sort of seductive petulance around his mouth.

Rowan did lean on Moria the next morning at the first note of petulance.

The Rowan did lean on Moria the next morning at the first note of petulance.

He was a good-looking youth and mercifully unaddicted to the extremes of fashion favoured by the Macaroni Club but his face was constantly overlaid with an expression of petulance and his manners frequently careless to the point of rudeness.

Perhaps it was under the consciousness of this extremely juvenile appearance that she affected, or at least practised, a little childish petulance and wilfulness of manner, not unbefitting, she might suppose, a youthful bride, whose rank and age gave her a right to have her fantasies indulged and attended to.

She felt the extremest anger at the unprovoked and unwarrantable harshness of Miss Margland, and a resentment nearly equal at the determined petulance, and unjustifiable aspersions of Indiana.

As boys, we learn to betray our future wives by mastering the subtle ways out mothers can be broken by our petulance and disapproval.

The telephone was ringing when she got there, ringing with a kind of dogged petulance, its arms prissily folded.

It being observed to him, that a rage for every thing English prevailed much in France after Lord Chatham's glorious war, he said, he did not wonder at it, for that we had drubbed those fellows into a proper reverence for us, and that their national petulance required periodical chastisement.

As always, the sleepy response of her queen cheered her of Nesso's petulance.

He is a radical, but he lacks the usual petulance and vicious fractionalism of the breed.

Then at sunset she sent him away with her pretty petulance, and Cuckoo bathed and perfumed her again and put on her fresh clothes, soft white silk against her flesh and peach-colored silk outside, the silken garments that Wang Lung had given, and upon her feet Cuckoo put small embroidered shoes, and then the girl walked into the court and examined the little pool with its five gold fish, and Wang Lung stood and stared at the wonder of what he had.

The two of them had indulged each other's petulances, lived and laughed together and generally done a relay race through hell as a team.

And now my great plea-sure lay in humouring all the petulances, all the wanton frolic of a raw novice just fleshed, and keen on the burning scent of his game, but unbroken to the sport: and, to carry on the figure, who could better TREAD THE WOOD than he, or stand fairer for the HEART OF THE HUNT?

Then I suddenly had the most tremendous feeling of the pitifulness of human beings, whatever they were, their faces, pained mouths, personalities, attempts to be gay, little petulances, feelings of loss, their dull and empty witticisms so soon forgotten: Ah, for what?