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Pettish

adjective
1.
Easily irritated or annoyed.  Synonyms: cranky, fractious, irritable, nettlesome, peckish, peevish, petulant, scratchy, techy, testy, tetchy.  "Not the least nettlesome of his countrymen"



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"Pettish" Quotes from Famous Books



... distinguishable in his features are his eyes and hair; and, as he looks in the glass to confirm what he has said, Annette takes him by the hand, tells him he must not mind, now; that if he is good he shall see Franconia,—and mother, too, one of these days. He must not be pettish, she remarks, holding him by the hand like a sister whose heart glows with hope for a brother's welfare. She gives him in charge of the messenger, saying, "Good by!" as she imprints a kiss on his cheek, its olive hues changing into ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... can," exclaimed the rabbit, a bit pettish-like, for he didn't care to have even a toad think he couldn't jump as ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis

... large-brained women, with a great natural grasp of charity, that severe pain lifts out of themselves: weak souls, like Grey, who starve without daily food of personal love, contract under God's great judgments, sour into pettish discontent, or grow maudlin as blind devotees, knowing but two things in eternity,—their own idea of God, and their own salvation. Nunneries are full of them. Grey had no vital pith of self-reliance to keep her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... persuasive sophistry—all of them gregarious influences, and all of them contagious—may decide by a shout what years of afterthought may find it hard, or even impossible, to undo. There have been some things in the deportment of the President of late that have suggested to thoughtful men rather the pettish foible of wilfulness than the strength of well-trained and conscientious will. It is by the objects for whose sake the force of volition is called into play that we decide whether it is childish or manly, whether we are to call it obstinacy or firmness. Our own judgment can draw no ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... though you disclaim all effort to find me, or wish to be agreeable when found, yet I will still confess that you arrived most opportunely. Monsieur de St. Aulaire grows fatiguing," she went on, with a pettish shrug of her shoulders. "He is as prodigal of compliments as ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... visit might remain a secret, too mortifying to both parties to be divulged, but she found Horatia in a state of eager anticipation, awakened from the torpor to watch for tidings of a happy conclusion to their difficulties, and preparing jests on the pettish ingratitude with which she expected Lucilla to requite the services that would be ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... home he had lost entirely the air of business-like severity which he had worn all day. He looked young and credulous. Juliet laughed with the pettish protest of a half-spoiled wife and drew ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... folded, but Kenrick was not to be deceived. He had caught one glimpse of Walter first; he saw his eyes wet with tears, and knew that he was in trouble. He hung on his foot doubtfully for one moment—but then his pride came in; he remembered the little pettish repulse in the playground the day before; the opportunity was lost, and he walked slowly on. And Walter's heart grew as hard within him ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... very pettish speech in Evelyn, and her cheek glowed while she spoke; but an arch, provoking smile was on ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... hangs her head, Repenting follies that full long have fled, Heaving her white breast to the balmy air, Like guilty beauty, chasten'd, and more fair: Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light She fears to perfume, perfuming the night: And Clytia [5] pondering between many a sun, While pettish tears adown her petals run: And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth [6]— And died, ere scarce exalted into birth, Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king: And Valisnerian lotus thither flown [7] ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... and the picture of good humour; but, change the scene, and Favoretta no longer appeared the same person: when alone, she was idle and spiritless; when with her maid or with her brother and sisters, pettish and capricious. Her usual play-fellow was Herbert, but their plays regularly ended in quarrels—quarrels in which both parties were commonly in the wrong, though the whole of the blame necessarily fell upon Herbert, for Herbert ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... strange fellow, John Constantine," was the answer, in a weary, almost pettish tone. "God knows I have more reason to be grateful to you than to ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... ever turns pettish or ill-humoured, I'll taunt her with that spark,' he said, when he had recovered. 'She'll little think I know about him; and, if I manage it well, I can break her spirit by this means and have her under my thumb. I'm glad nobody came. I didn't call ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... thou be mummer, languishing poet, pettish woman and spoiled princeling all in one? No! And I shall love the clanking of arms and thy mailed footsteps all the more if thou permittest me to look upon irresponsible folly while ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller

... sixteen years old, and being undersized and childish of appearance had never had the pleasure of the company of a young man. The yearning in her pettish face as she stood unevenly on the discarded harness, looking out of the window toward John Hunter, caught Elizabeth's attention and illuminated the whole affair to the ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... against a stone wall, for thus I regarded it, became at last almost unendurable. Clavering shy, and the secretary unapproachable—how was I to gain anything? The short interviews I had with Mary did not help matters. Haughty, constrained, feverish, pettish, grateful, appealing, everything at once, and never twice the same, I learned to dread, even while I coveted, an interview. She appeared to be passing through some crisis which occasioned her the keenest suffering. I have seen her, when she thought herself alone, ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... answered the Admiral, who appeared relieved now the story was at an end, "you would have found him very pettish." The admiral's play on ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... shall do nothing of the sort," he at once answered me. "Do you know that you have behaved in this affair like a young inexperienced man, or, to speak out, like a blunderer? I am surprised that you did not comprehend that the Emperor, with his pettish spirit, might take this much amiss, and consider you, according to the contents of the two letters, as the promoter of an intrigue in favour of the exiled family of the Bourbons." Thus the paternal advice of the French Consul taught me that in all that ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... walk on ahead, without even troubling himself to see if she followed—this was too much for her composure. Her face clouded over, and though she made a valiant effort to preserve her composure, it was in vain, and she was glad to find an outlet for her irritation in pettish complainings. ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... merry times, and don't care if I never have any more!" answered our pettish little Pandora. "And, besides, I never do have any. This ugly box! I am so taken up with thinking about it all the time. I insist upon your telling me what is ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... Heart is so full of Lofes and Passions for Mrs. Gwinifrid, and she is so pettish and overrun with Cholers against me, that if I had the good Happiness to have my Dwelling (which is placed by my Creat-Cranfather upon the Pottom of an Hill) no farther Distance but twenty Mile from the Lofers Leap, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... the noblest hearts At times may have some grief, And even in a pettish word May seek to ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... heavy moustache, and a bronzed cheek—rather grave in his manner, but still perfectly good-natured, and when he smiled showing a most handsome set of regular teeth. Clara seemed less pleased (I thought) at his coming than the others, and took pleasure in tormenting him by a thousand pettish and frivolous ways, which I was sorry for, as I thought he did not like it; and used to look half chidingly at her from time to time, but without any effect, for she just went on as before, and generally ended by taking ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... my good friend," said I; "I was a fool then, and did not think I could incline to be Glentanner with L200 or L300 a year, instead of Glentanner with as many thousands. I was then a haughty, pettish, ignorant, dissipated, broken-down Scottish laird; and thinking my imaginary consequence altogether ruined, I cared not how soon, or how absolutely, I was rid of everything that recalled it to my own ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... he saw the lady walking impatiently up and down the room, tapping at the window, mending the fire, and expressing her haste in many other pettish manners so truly feminine. It was Florine. He knew the girl well from his frequenting Bertrand's during this piece of business. Jerome sent her word he would be in, and changing his costume to one he usually wore, presented himself before her in the ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... that he hates all Buonapartes, past, present, or to come, but then he says that in his self-willed, pettish way, as a manner of dismissing a subject he won't think about—and knowing very well that he doesn't think about it, not mistaking a feeling for a reason, not for a moment. There's the difference between women ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... March came in with Marlowe's rapturous rage: Peele, from whose hand the sweet white locks of age Took the mild chaplet woven of honoured hours: Nash, laughing hard: Lodge, flushed from lyric bowers: And Lilly, a goldfinch in a twisted cage Fed by some gay great lady's pettish page Till short sweet songs gush clear like short spring showers: Kid, whose grim sport still gambolled over graves: And Chettle, in whose fresh funereal verse Weeps Marian yet on Robin's wildwood hearse: Cooke, whose ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... and when Richard warned her that she was not keeping her dress out of the dirt, it sounded like a sarcasm on her projects, and, with a slightly pettish manner, she raised the unfortunate skirt, its crape trimmings greatly bespattered with ruddy mud. Then recollecting how mamma would have shaken her head at that very thing, she regretted the temper she had betrayed, and in a larmoyante voice, sighed, "I wish I could pick my ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... column, or less, of the Herald. The moment Miss Crawford saw the slip, her anxiety seemed to be redoubled, and she reached over to Joe, as if to take the paper, with the words, half-pleading, half-pettish: ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... eight, aunt," said Hetty, in a pettish tone, with a slight toss of her head. "But this clock's so much before the clock at the Chase, there's no telling what time it'll ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... said he could not remain, and unfastened her arms from his neck with a somewhat pettish air. She laughed however, and again clasped her ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... into Spabbink's room. Under Groby's vigorous measures the musician's flabby, redundant figure sat up in bewildered semi-consciousness like an ice-cream that has been taught to beg. Groby prodded him into complete wakefulness, and then the pettish self-satisfied pianist fairly lost his temper and slapped his domineering visitant on the hand. In another moment Spabbink was being nearly stifled and very effectually gagged by a pillow-case tightly bound round his head, while his plump pyjama'd limbs were hauled out of bed ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... my hand, she's doo to begin shootin' me up herse'f if I don't show more passionate anxiety about leadin' her to the altar. It's then, not seein' why the old gent should go entertainin' notions ag'in me, an' deemin' mebby that when he blazes away that time he's merely pettish and don't really mean said bullet none, that ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... kind to me, and you are cruel; for when I ask for love, you give me jewels, books, or flowers, as you would give a pettish child a toy, and go away as if you were weary of me. Oh, it is not right, Sir! and I cannot, no, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... rain, plume droopt and mantle clung, And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day Went glooming down in wet and weariness: But under her black brows a swarthy one Laughed shrilly, crying, 'Praise the patient saints, Our one white day of Innocence hath past, Though somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... giving to his writing, which subdued and attracted her far more than any words he could have spoken to her, or notice he could have taken of her just then. He had apparently forgotten her, this kind Monsieur le Docteur, who had evidently more important things to think about than her and her pettish little speeches; or she had perhaps made him angry, and he would not take any more notice of her at all? There was a certain amount of probability in this last idea to the self- convicted little Madelon, that urged her to some sort of action; she sat still ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... any body may naturally imagine, came down with my mother into the country, in but a pettish kind of a humour. The first twenty or five-and-twenty miles he did nothing in the world but fret and teaze himself, and indeed my mother too, about the cursed expence, which he said might every shilling of it have been saved;—then what vexed him more than every thing else ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... massed against the rebellion of his disorganized adolescence her mature, well-ripened capacity to get her own way. She held him with her eyes as an animal-trainer is supposed to cow his snarling, yellow-fanged captives, and in a moment Arnold, with a pettish gesture, blew out the match and shut the cigarette case with a snap. Mrs. Marshall-Smith forbore to over-emphasize her victory by a feather-weight of gloating, and turned to her sister-in-law with a ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... her hands, and the face defined by the slim fingers was small and delicate, pale with the clear pallor of perfect health, and now slowly flushing to some emotion. The little chin was firm, but the mouth was pettish. Her teeth bit on a gold chain, which encircled her neck and held a crystal reliquary. A spoiled pretty child, she looked, and in ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... pettish one day; 'If you keep on complaining,' he swore, 'I'll pack both my bow and my quiver away, And so I shall plague you no more.' 'Hey, Love, you mustn't do that! Hi, Love, what would you be at? You may ruin our ease, ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle

... was more remarkable for its deep feeling in the dramatic portions than for lightness and gracefulness in the lyric. This loss brought with it a compensation, however. Many protests have been felt, when not expressed, against the tendency of singers to make Mignon a mere wilful, pettish, silly young woman. The poet's ideal was sufficiently despoiled by the unconscionable French librettist without this further desecration which effectually dispelled the last glimmer of the poetical light that ought always to shine about this strange child ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... the common fault of old communities to overvalue themselves, and to undervalue new actors in the great drama of nations, as men long successful disregard the efforts of new aspirants for favor;" said Seadrift, while he looked with amazement at the pettish eye of the frowning beauty. "In this instance, however, Europe has not so greatly erred. They who see much resemblance between the bay of Naples and this of Manhattan, have fertile brains; since it rests altogether on the circumstance that there is much water in ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... for to her mind the pleasantest and kindest person in the world put in comparison with Roger was as nothing; he stood by himself. Cynthia's next words,—and they did not come very soon,—were on quite a different subject, and spoken in rather a pettish tone. Nor did she allude again in jesting sadness to ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... keys in the bedroom. Then Eliza went up, and she could not find them, either. By a sort of oversight they were in my pocket all the time. I laughingly remarked that I knew I should find them first. Eliza seemed rather pettish, the joke ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain

... we can, and all I mean to do," said Alice Hooper, with a pettish accent of fatigue. "Everything's perfectly comfortable, and if she doesn't like it, we can't help it. I don't know why we make such ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Dorm. What a pettish Fool is a Maid in love at fifteen! how unmanageable! But I'll forgive all— go get you in, I'll watch for your Lover; I would not have you disoblige a Man of his Pretensions and Quality for all the World. [Clarinda ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... of surprise and wonder. Surprise and wonder that the beautiful Juliet St. Leger, during six months of intimate courtship, so successfully could have veiled, under constant guise of amiability, the weak, pettish nature which she was now ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... all very well to call me your dear,' said Bella, with a pettish whimper, 'and I am glad to be called so, though I have slight enough claim to be. But I AM such a nasty ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... to divorce me, YOU would be taken back too," she added quickly, suddenly withdrawing herself with a pettish movement and walking to ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte

... Lazelle called him "a pretty little fellow," and thought it a fine joke. He laughed, too, when the young man told him to "come out," for there was something in the pettish tone of his voice which Horace considered ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May

... poor Lettice sunk within her in a way she was little accustomed to, as the general, in a very pettish mood, stirred the fire, and said. "When are we to have dinner, Mrs. Melwyn? What are we waiting for? Will you never teach that cook of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... the house late on the afternoon of Friday, and there was much fresh crying between her and Annie. Leslie had on new black, too, "just what I could grab down there," she explained—and was pettish and weary with fatigue and the nervous shock. She gave only the side of her cheek to Acton's dutiful kiss, and answered his question about the baby with an impatient, "Oh, heavens, she's all right! What could be the matter with her? She did have a cold, but now she's all right—and when I'm ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... pin and laid it away, put on a dry bib, and gave her baby a nice ivory ring to bite; then began to dance up and down the room, till the shadowy baby clapped its hands and kicked delightedly. Polly laughed, and did the same, feeling sorry she had been so pettish. Presently both babies grew quiet, went to sleep, and were laid in ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... and temptations; but he was ignorant of my condition; he bade me take tobacco and sing psalms. Tobacco was a thing I did not love, and psalms I was not in a state to sing; I could not sing. Then he bid me come again and he would tell me many things; but when I came he was angry and pettish; for my former words had displeased him. He told my troubles, sorrows and griefs to his servants so that it got among the milk-lasses. It grieved me that I should have opened my mind to such a one. I saw they were all miserable comforters, and this brought my troubles ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... She drew a quick pettish breath of objection, writhing uneasily on her seat, looked far ahead, and murmured, "I don't know—I wish—how can I say ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... rather sober at this. He hesitated a moment. He wanted to ask his pettish sister a question, but evidently did not know how to go ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson

... She was pettish withal, and easily offended, and if refused calico for an okendokenda, or beads, or ribbon to ornament some part of her dress, she would sullenly rest her chin on her hand, until pacified with a present, ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman

... Madge pettishly. She was not a pettish person, only just now something in her sister's words had the ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... anything but me. Ephraim said I was exacting, and I thought him cold and unkind. And so there gradually grew up a coldness between us; and yet the coldness was all on my side. Ephraim was always gentle, even when I was pettish and cross. For so I was. It was partly physical. I was not well that winter. I did not sleep, or when I did by fits and starts, I woke frightened and crying. Now, my doctor would call it nervous sensitiveness; but then people did not give fine names to their humors, and mother only looked sorry, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... to hope for even up to the verge of the grave. When the sullen storm-cloud of misfortune lowers and life seems dim and dreary, that is the hour to summon up courage, and to look persistently beyond the bounds of the mournful present. Why should we uplift our voices in pettish questioning? The blows that cut most cruelly are meant for our better discipline, and, if we steel every nerve against the onset of despair, the battle is half won even before we put forth a conscious ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... began to observe indications of a change for the worse in his character. He grew more pettish and dissatisfied, and frequently acted towards her with great unkindness. He was rarely, if ever, at home before midnight, and then repulsed every affectionate act or word. Several times he came in intoxicated, and once, while in that ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... from visiting, I lingered by the window and saw the first shadowy flakes of a new storm. The wind rose quickly to a howl, an icy branch tapped at the pane; we had narrowly escaped a dangerous home-coming. I could not resist a somewhat pettish complaint. ...
— In the Border Country • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... don't be miserable," said Gwendolen, with pettish remonstrance. "It only makes me more so. I ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... become more and more marked till they pass into what may be called the first stage of the affection, in which there are signs of congestion of the brain, such as I have already described, coupled with general irregular attacks of feverishness. The child becomes more gloomy, more pettish, and slower in its movements, and is little pleased by its usual amusements. Or, at other times, its spirits are very variable; it will sometimes cease suddenly in the midst of its play, and run to hide its head in its mother's lap, putting its hands to its head, and complaining of headache, ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... home in a pettish fume. No sooner was he within and the door fast shut, that none might behold save only those of his own household, who were accustomed to the aberrations of his temper and who regarded them with blended awe and respect, than ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... appearance. The air was scented, too, with some pleasant odour of a not too pungent kind. But the table lacked one customary feature; no tea was laid as it was wont to be at this hour. The child gazed round in surprise. Her mother was in bed, lying back on raised pillows, and with a restless, half-pettish look ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... it for myself—I have had it by me for twenty years! Seeing that thee must stick thy nose into my business!" His tone was pettish and he stooped down and began to toss splinters and ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... with a pettish slam. There might be a scene here were it not that CRICHTON reappears and goes to one of the glass cases. All are at once on the alert and his lordship ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie

... in his pettish resentment, that the younger traveller, who was in no such pressing hurry to depart, could not help being amused with it, especially as it was obvious, that every now and then the old gentleman, though very angry, could not help laughing at his own vehemence. But when ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... The broil must have been turbid in the old man's brain which the grand, slow-stepping music of the Florentine could not calm. She had learned that long ago, and used it as a nurse does some old song to quiet her pettish infant. His ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... orders as if something were going to happen again. I never felt so before; I never used to have the least concern in what you call 'the working of the ship,' and now"—her voice, which had been half playful, half pettish, suddenly became grave,—"and now—look at the mate and those men forward. There certainly is something going on, or is going to happen. ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... irritable, and fractious, peevish, and pettish. He is morbidly anxious about trifles: slight ruffles on the surface, and trivial annoyances in the family circle or during the course of business, worry, flurry, tease and fret him, nothing satisfying or soothing ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... middle-aged woman rose as I came in, and I stood aghast. It was not my sister. It was soon explained. She was a little pettish about it, poor woman! It seemed my sister had quite recently changed her house, and the present occupant had been put to some slight inconvenience before by people calling and leaving parcels after her departure. She gave me Jane's new address, which was only ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... half forgotten the matter; but now he remembered that Mildred had been keen to have the part only a week ago, and a little pettish because he had advised her to leave it alone, on account of Mrs. Shaw. Now she was hanging on him with desperate eyes and that worried brow which he had not seen once ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... and inadvertently touched upon the absurdity of supposing there could be any superiority, of man over man, except that which genius and virtue gave. Sir Arthur did not approve the doctrine, and was pettish. I perhaps was warmed, by a latent sense of my own situation, and exclaimed—'Oh! How many noble hearts are groaning, at this instant, under the oppression of these prejudices! Hearts that groan, not because they suffer, but because they are denied ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... voice, but to be good for her whole character—that is, if she had made a good use of them. But in these times, being usually already out of temper with the difficult answers of the Catechism questions, and obliged to keep in her pettish feelings towards what concerned sacred things, she let all out in the music lesson, and with her murmurs and her inattention, her yawns and her blunders, rendered herself infinitely more dull and unmusical than nature had made her, and was a grievous torment to poor Mrs. Lacy, and her ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... he should be after his deep disappointment, and with the sense of his father's displeasure resting on him, and the prospect of the day school before him. Both father and mother were touched sometimes when they caught the sad expression of his face; but he was no longer sullen; and if a pettish word escaped him, he seemed to catch himself up quickly before it could be ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford

... black as thunder, And savage as RURIC the Red. For this did we lose the Crimea? For this did we larrup the Jews? I really had not an idea Republics could rule—and amuse. Miss FRANCE looks extremely coquettish. How well Miss COLUMBIA can coax! The Teuton, no doubt, will look pettish, The Briton will grumble "a hoax." Aha! I can snub a Lord Mayor, And give shouting Emperors a hint; I back La Belle France. Her betrayer My meaning must see, plain as print. My reply to the great Guildhall grumble Had less of politeness than pith, But—well I've no wish ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various

... haply 'twas the cannonade Of the pent and darkened lake, Cooled by the pendent mountain's shade, Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break, Afflicted moan, and latest hold Even into May the iceberg cold. Was it a squirrel's pettish bark, Or clarionet of jay? or hark Where yon wedged line the Nestor leads, Steering north with raucous cry Through tracts and provinces of sky, Every night alighting down In new landscapes of romance, Where darkling feed the clamorous clans By lonely lakes to men unknown. Come the tumult whence ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... that old maid sister of his, and how she was a queer old girl; but I didn't have any idea what a cold blooded proposition she was. Honest, she seemed put out and pettish ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... indeed, young as he was, had felt the kind pulses of all those dear kinsmen), that Harry thought it would be his duty to warn my Lord Mohun, and let him know that his designs were suspected and watched. So one day, when in rather a pettish humor his lordship had sent to Lady Castlewood, who had promised to drive with him, and now refused to come, Harry said—"My lord, if you will kindly give me a place by your side I will thank you; I have much to say to you, and would like to speak ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... russet before it reached the burnt splendour of her cheeks; her mouth, rather long and curved up at the corners, had lips rich and crimson; of which, however, the upper was short to a fault, and so curled back as to give her, a pettish or fretful look. Her dark hair, which was plentiful and drawn low over her ears into a heavy knot at the nape of her neck, was dressed within a fine gold net. Her arms were bare to the elbow, large and snowy white; from her fingers gems ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... Since when have you gone into melodrama?" The voice was pettish, but the listener was not slow to catch a tremor of discomfort under its attempted loftiness. "As if I cared!—or need to fear such stuff as Gregoriev's!—Go to Zaremba, if you like, and tell him I sent you for the manuscript.—Much good ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... him: "You are a real poison in this country, Herr Doctor!"—and not very long before the war a German official to whom he was applying for leave to invite M. Andre Tardieu to lecture in Strasbourg, broke out with pettish exasperation: "For twenty years you have been turning my hair grey, M. le Docteur!"—and permission was refused. At the outbreak of war, he naturally escaped from Strasbourg, and joined the French army; while during the latter part of the ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Editor-Who-Believes-In-Me. Let the thing go on." I would send him off another manuscript. He would take it. Victory, by Jove! Then—wonk! Back would come my third effort with the curtest of refusals. I always imagined editors in those days to be pettish, whimsical men who amused themselves by taking up a beginner, and then, wearying of the sport, dropped him back into the slime from ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... not be in Paris," says the young man, still in the same discontented, pettish voice. "She will be there, no doubt—well to the front—in the thickest of ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... honeymoon, too, when my most inveterate enemy might relent, one would think, and not envy me a little peace of mind and happiness. Davy, you naughty boy! Peggotty, you savage creature! Oh, dear me!' cried my mother, turning from one of us to the other, in her pettish wilful manner, 'what a troublesome world this is, when one has the most right to expect it to ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... ourselves with merely saying that the effect of Grace's exclamation on Eve was unpleasant, and that, unlike the baronet, she thought her cousin was never less handsome than while her pretty face was covered with the pettish frown it had assumed ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... out of the library across the hall. Errington followed him in silence. He knocked at the door of his wife's room,—in response to her "Come in!" they both entered. She was alone, reclining on a sofa, reading,—she started up with a pettish exclamation at sight of her husband, but observing who it was that came with him, she stood mute, the color rushing to her cheeks with surprise and something of fear. Yet she endeavored to smile, and returned with her usual ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... Thorpe wasn't pettish, but he was discouraged and unstrung. He knew that his arrest, which was imminent, was, in part, due to the assertions of the medium and the Ouija Board. These secrets had leaked out somehow, and though the detective, Weston, would have scorned to acknowledge it, he had been more ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... swinging door; and then Denry most clearly heard the Countess's own authentic voice saying in a pettish, disgusted tone: ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... profession. Grave-eyed and intent, they went through the day's routine with a cheery patience under drudgery which showed the noble stuff of which they were made. They looked askance at Phebe's grumblings, her fluctuating enthusiasm, her hours of girlish frivolity and of pettish complaint. Among themselves, they analyzed her; but they were unable to classify her. She was foreign to their ways of life and thought; in a word, they set her down as worldly and ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... some look, or gesture of opposition to her wishes. She turned sharp round on Mary, the old object of her pettish attacks, and said, "Now, wench! once for all, I tell you this. HE could never guide me; and he'd sense enough not to try. What he could na do, don't you try. I shall go to Liverpool tomorrow, and find my lad, and stay with him through thick and thin; and if he dies, why, perhaps, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... passed unnoticed. Rowland submitted a while longer to be cradled, and contented himself with listening to Mr. Hudson's voice. It was a soft and not altogether masculine organ, and was pitched on this occasion in a somewhat plaintive and pettish key. The young man's mood seemed fretful; he complained of the heat, of the dust, of a shoe that hurt him, of having gone on an errand a mile to the other side of the town and found the person he was in search of had left Northampton an ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... it down upon the table with a pettish gesture that was wholly feminine. "Sounds perfectly innocent, doesn't it? Too perfectly innocent, if you ask me." She stared out of the window abstractedly, her brows pinched together and her lips pursed with a corner between ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... which way the wind blows. His wife listened with some uneasiness, for she had always hoped the Colonel tacitly approved the attachment between their respective relatives, which to her appeared so evident. She could only trust this was but a pettish effusion from their prolonged absence, and determined to guard against such causes of offence ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... of this pony was indeed one of my father's many kind thoughts for my welfare and amusement. My odd pilgrimage to the Rectory in search of change and society, and the pettish complaints of dulness and monotony at home which I had urged to account for my freak of "dropping in," had seemed to him not without a certain serious foundation. Except for walks about the farm with him, and stolen snatches of intercourse with the grooms, and dogs, ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... mind irritable, the body weak; when from that invisible weakness, little evils become great, the temper loses its equanimity, the spirits their elasticity, we scarcely know wherefore, and we reproach ourselves, and add to our uneasiness by thinking we are becoming pettish and ill-tempered, enervated and repining; we dare not confess such feelings, for our looks proclaim not failing health, and who would believe us? when the very struggle for cheerfulness fills the eye with tears, the heart with heaviness, and we feel provoked at ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar

... lea Spread a green kirtle to the minstrelsy: A virgin purest lipp'd, yet in the lore Of love deep learned to the red heart's core: Not one hour old, yet of sciential brain To unperplex bliss from its neighbour pain; Define their pettish limits, and estrange Their points of contact, and swift counterchange; Intrigue with the specious chaos, and dispart Its most ambiguous atoms with sure art; As though in Cupid's college she had spent Sweet days a lovely ...
— Lamia • John Keats

... say that, Mr. Soames; but he's turned against his Will. He gets quite pettish—and after having had it out every morning for years, it does seem funny. He said the other day: 'They want my money.' It gave me such a turn, because, as I said to him, nobody wants his money, I'm sure. And it does seem a pity he should be thinking about money ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... replied the renegade. "Caneri, you know how firmly I am devoted to the Moorish cause; why then was I insulted when it was only to advance the interests of that cause I spoke? But let that pass; I am no pettish boy to quarrel with my associates for a word uttered intemperately ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... impetuously, as he advanced with outstretched hand toward his prisoner, "and with all my heart, sir, I thank you. Forgive my pettish speech of a moment since; you were right to reprove me. No one appreciates a gallant foe more than I; and though the fortune of war has to-day made you my prisoner, to-morrow may ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln

... she who had started the whole thing, and got Tish's subconscious mind to working, Aggie was rather pettish. ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... when they are under the glow of splendid eloquence, that there is behind the words a thinking, reflective, and composed mind. The speech gained enormously by the contrast of its composure—its fine temper, its calm and broad judgment—from the somewhat pettish, personal, and passionate utterances of Mr. Chamberlain. This young man will go very far—very ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... written two years ago, and which were suggested by an indignant feeling at the cold manner with which the National Anthem was received by some persons who used to be loud in their professions of loyalty on former public occasions. Happily, this wayward and pettish, I will not call it disloyal spirit, has passed away, and most of the "Annexationists" are now heartily ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... gentleman bustled about his shop, in pettish displeasure at being summoned hither so hastily, to the interruption of his more abstract studies; and, unwilling to renounce the train of calculation which he had put in progress, he mingled whimsically with the fragments of the arithmetical ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... pesto. Pestilential pesta, pestiga. Pestle pistilo. Pet dorloti. Petal florfolieto. Petard petardo. Petition petegi. Petition petskribo. Petrify sxtonigi. Petroleum petrolo. Petticoat subjupo. Pettish malgxentila. Petty malgranda. Petulance petoleco. Petulant petola. Pew pregxbenko. Pewter stano. Phantom apero, fantomo. Pharmacist farmaciisto. Pharmacy (place) farmaciejo, apoteko. Pharmacy (science) farmacio. Pharos lumturo. Pharynx faringo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... in one of her slightly pettish moods this evening. Peter didn't better matters by saying, "Oh, well, none of the others count. Lucy and I have always been different from most cousins, I suppose; more like brother and sister, ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... in the hotel chamber in Ciudad Real—that forlornest of royal cities—her face wore the pettish look of one who, having passed through great events, having tasted of great passions and moved amid the machinery of life and death, finds the ordinary routine of existence intolerably irksome. Many faces wear such ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman

... fealty of the barons, and passed into Normandy in the spring of 1154. The work of reformation had already begun. Stephen resented indeed the pressure which Henry put on him to enforce the destruction of the castles built during the anarchy; but Stephen's resistance was but the pettish outbreak of a ruined man. He was in fact fast drawing to the grave; and on his death in October 1154 Henry returned to take the crown ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green

... you are cross, Miss Garston: you are not a saint, after all, though Giles says you sing like a cherub: I don't know where he ever heard one, but that is his affair. Well, as you choose to get pettish over it, I will be amiable, and tell you what we do. Etta says we waste our time dreadfully, but as it is our time and not hers, it is ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... there, my dear; they'll soon be better," said Mrs Dean, bending over him; and the sight of those two, with Esau's pettish ill-humour, quite drove away the rest of my gloom for the time. For as Mrs Dean bent over her ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... let him that will compare the benefits they receive by me, the metamorphoses of the gods, of whom I shall not mention what they have done in their pettish humors but where they have been most favorable: turning one into a tree, another into a bird, a third into a grasshopper, serpent, or the like. As if there were any difference between perishing and being another thing! But I restore the same man to the best and happiest ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus

... The pettish inquiring tone was exactly what delighted him. And he continued to tease her in the same style till Laura and Amabel came running in with their ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... her wrists tight at the clasp of her waist, and letting her chin fall on her throat, shook her body fretfully, much as a pettish little girl might do. Wilfrid grimaced. "Tick-tick" was not a pathetic elegy ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... before, in the Louvre; her form too was of a classical lightness and perfection. The Englishman noticed indeed that her temper was apparently not equal to her looks. When her small brothers interrupted her, she repelled them with a pettish word or gesture; the English governess addressed her, and got no answer beyond a haughty look; even her mother was scarcely ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... scattered 'round de plantation. De biggest of 'em had two rooms and evvy cabin had a chimbly made out of sticks and red mud. Most of de chillun slept on pallets on de floor, but I slept wid my Pa and Ma 'cause I was so pettish. Most of de beds was made out of poles, dis a-way: Dey bored two holes in de wall, wide apart as dey wanted de bed, and in dese holes dey stuck one end of de poles what was de side pieces. Dey sharpened de ends of two more poles and driv' 'em in de floor for de foot ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration



Words linked to "Pettish" :   ill-natured, tetchy



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