the.com/peevish
The fully grown human equivalent of a cat who wants its food bowl moved two inches.
means Easily irritated, querulous, and bad-tempered over small things — sulky and hard to please.
from Recorded in English from the late Middle Ages, peevish first meant something more like 'silly,' 'spiteful,' or 'perverse' before settling into its modern sense of fretful crankiness. Its ultimate roots are murky — etymologists honestly don't agree, though some have linked it speculatively to Latin perversus, 'turned the wrong way,' which fits the spirit of a person turned contrary at the slightest provocation.
- old roots
- From Middle English, meaning silly, spiteful, or perverse.
- small stakes
- Reserved for irritation too petty to call rage.
- face first
- It lives in the eyebrows before the mouth.
- contagious
- One peevish person can sour an entire room.
king george iii — british monarch whose documented irritability and frequent outbursts were recorded by contemporaries and historians throughout his reign (1760-1820)
ebenezer scrooge — dickens character in a christmas carol (1843) whose peevish, ill-tempered nature before his transformation is central to the entire narrative