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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
skittish
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And if Apple falls apart, software developers could get even more skittish about sinking money into writing programs for Macs.
▪ Any pack animals the adventurers have may get restless and skittish.
▪ As it is, the thundering herd is likely to prove a skittish lot.
▪ At the heart of the problem is this: Bighorn sheep are skittish animals.
▪ At work she was a supremely confident executive; with her first child she was a skittish novice.
▪ Cranston's mount became skittish and even Philomel showed a lively interest in the group round the scaffold.
▪ Institutional investors such as mutual funds are more skittish and can bail out after a few quarters of soft earnings.
▪ My horse was skittish, I could not settle him.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Skittish

Skittish \Skit"tish\, a. [See Skit, v. t.]

  1. Easily frightened; timorous; shy; untrustworthy; as, a skittish colt. ``A restiff, skittish jade.''
    --L'Estrange.

  2. Wanton; restive; freakish; volatile; changeable; fickle. ``Skittish Fortune's hall.''
    --Shak. [1913 Webster] -- Skit"tish*ly, adv. -- Skit"tish*ness, n.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
skittish

early 15c., "very lively, frivolous," perhaps from Scandinavian base *skyt- (stem of Old Norse skjota "to shoot, launch, move quickly"), from PIE root *skeud- "to shoot, to chase, to throw, to project" (see shoot (v.)). Sense of "shy, nervous, apt to run" first recorded c.1500, of horses. Related: Skittishly; skittishness.

Wiktionary
skittish

a. 1 Easily scared or startled; timid. 2 wanton; changeable; fickle

WordNet
skittish

adj. unpredictably excitable (especially of horses) [syn: spooky, nervous]

Wikipedia
Skittish

Skittish is a Mike Doughty album recorded with indie rock producer Kramer ( Low, Galaxie 500, Bongwater, B.A.L.L., Daniel Johnston) in one day, July 5, 1996, and mixed on July 6. Frustrated by the acrimonious sessions for Soul Coughing's Irresistible Bliss, and attracted to Kramer's signature minimal, reverby sound, Doughty took a batch of songs—some rejected by, some withheld from Soul Coughing—and crossed the river to bang the disc out at Kramer's studio, Noise New Jersey, a gigantic, shag-carpeted room built as an addition to a house by a would-be Disco musician in the 70s, to which Kramer added huge echo plates running down either side of his garage—the source of his trademark haunting sound.

Though Kramer built up some songs in Doughty's absence, with strings and organ, the disc is mostly a stark affair. Doughty's riffs—often using a guitar rhythm Doughty calls the "gangadank"—punctuate emotional lyrics on songs such as "The Only Answer" and "The Pink Life". It was extremely different from Soul Coughing, and confused by the sonic departure, his label, Warner Bros., rejected it.

But the album found its own life. Versions of the songs, often featuring extra instruments as experimental mixes, ended up on Napster as The Skittish Sessions. When Doughty quit Soul Coughing in 2000 and hit the road as a one-man act, he was astonished to find audiences singing along to these tunes. He quickly printed up white label versions of the CD and sold them himself at the gigs, selling 20,000, mostly by hand at the front of the stage after the shows.

Skittish was re-released as part of a two disc set along with the electro EP Rockity Roll, on December 7, 2004. See Skittish / Rockity Roll for details.

Usage examples of "skittish".

Though Kikit had gone since December without an allergy attack, the last one had left her skittish about eating anything other than what we had checked and she had checked, and even then she searched for things as she ate.

And very soon loud, smacking kisses, amatory pinches and ticklings, and skittish squeals of pleasure did their work.

To the skittish dismay of the buffalo, the parafoils billowed open and jolted their load over the uneven terrain.

Conquering the skittish entrances and squashing some unscored tritones, we flew along well.

The blesbok was too small and skittish - would only teach our oryx frustration.

The little Rabbits, they mighty skittish, and they sort of huddle themselves up together and watch Brer Fox motions.

I curried Gairloch after dinner, and he was skittish, probably because of the early summerlike heat that was creating a high haze in the sky and large numbers of hungry flies that seemed to buzz everywhere.

But she knew that the brass was especially skittish of words like harassment and gender bias, was still smarting from the sexual harassment charges several female employees had made against the outgoing superintendent months before.

Closer to the mainland, at a place called Snake Bight, lives a flock of rare wild flamingos, pink and skittish confetti in the mangroves.

There were skittish gazellelike creatures of the kind she had seen before.

Tucker danced his own kind of ballet through the outcroppings and knotholes of the cramped engineering deck, a complex scaffold made to support experimental technology of the most skittish kind.

Most everyone in Lavas Holding now treated Alain with a skittish deference tinged with disgust, like a man who is afraid to spit on a leprous beggar lest he turn out to be a saint in disguise.

Micro Business Machines and General Electric re was still a lot of amorphously skittish international law ties like Pylos, most of it centering on whether artificial had fulfilled enough of the Turing test to qualify as citile countries AIs had rights comparable to nonliving legal corporations.

It was Olivia who had to fight this time, but yet another clap of thunder drove her skittish horse mad, and she danced first sideways then straight ahead, and jumped high in the air, unexpectedly, across a wall of hedges.

The horse grew more and more skittish, and he tried to calm and control the animal, and so he was still there when MacDonald rounded the switchback turn and practically ran into him.