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What is "tetchy"

Crossword clues for tetchy

tetchy
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
tetchy
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And all the time Chief Inspector Morse sat, less tetchy now, staring at the street map of Oxford.
▪ And I noticed another thing: Jean-Claude was tetchy.
▪ But he was more withdrawn, tetchy.
▪ He guesses that's why Paul is sometimes tetchy with Keith.
▪ Meredith went up to the rehearsal room in a less tetchy state of mind.
▪ Nobody had ever seen the Manager look so pale and tetchy as the morning after.
▪ There are few in this campaign, and so we are rather tetchy.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Tetchy

Tetchy \Tetch"y\, a. See Techy.
--Shak.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
tetchy

"easily irritated," 1592, teachie, in "Romeo & Juliet" I.iii.32; of uncertain origin. Perhaps from Middle English tatch "a mark, quality," derived via Old French from Vulgar Latin *tecca, from a Germanic source akin to Old English tacen (see token).

Wiktionary
tetchy

a. Easily annoyed or irritated; peevish, testy or irascible

WordNet
tetchy

  1. adj. easily irritated or annoyed; "an incorrigibly fractious young man"; "not the least nettlesome of his countrymen" [syn: cranky, fractious, irritable, nettlesome, peevish, peckish, pettish, petulant, testy, techy]

  2. [also: tetchiest, tetchier]

Usage examples of "tetchy".

S'anra gaped like a landed fish for a second or two - because of her mistake maybe, or because Arrhae was being unusually tetchy, or for some other reason restricted to scullery slaves - then scurried away with the groceries.

The station in Buenos Aires had just entered into a tetchy liaison relationship with the Argentine security service, so I fired off an ATHS telegram asking whether SIDE might provide Huntley with documentation.