PEEVISH

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does peevish mean? 

• PEEVISH (adjective)
  The adjective PEEVISH has 1 sense:

1. easily irritated or annoyed

  Familiarity information: PEEVISH used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PEEVISH (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Easily irritated or annoyed

Synonyms:

cranky; fractious; irritable; nettlesome; peckish; peevish; pettish; petulant; scratchy; techy; testy; tetchy

Context example:

not the least nettlesome of his countrymen

Similar:

ill-natured (having an irritable and unpleasant disposition)

Derivation:

peevishness (an irritable petulant feeling)

 Context examples 

"I am so tired, so tired," he would murmur, rolling his head back and forth on the pillow like a peevish child.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

The discussion of Mr. Collins's offer was now nearly at an end, and Elizabeth had only to suffer from the uncomfortable feelings necessarily attending it, and occasionally from some peevish allusions of her mother.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Indeed it is Julia Mills, peevish and fine, with a black man to carry cards and letters to her on a golden salver, and a copper-coloured woman in linen, with a bright handkerchief round her head, to serve her Tiffin in her dressing-room.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He said, “they commonly acted like mortals till about thirty years old; after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession: for otherwise, there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and repine that others have gone to a harbour of rest to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and middle-age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition, than upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in others.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Wholly inattentive to her sister's feelings, Lydia flew about the house in restless ecstasy, calling for everyone's congratulations, and laughing and talking with more violence than ever; whilst the luckless Kitty continued in the parlour repined at her fate in terms as unreasonable as her accent was peevish.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)