peevish

Meanings

Adjective

• Characterized by or exhibiting petty bad temper, bad-tempered, moody, cross.
• Constantly complaining, whining; childishly fretful.
• Easily annoyed, especially by things that are not important; irritable, querulous.
• Clever, expert.
• Sharp, piercing, bitter (of the wind); windy, blustery (of the weather).
• Perverse, refractory; headstrong, obstinate; capricious, skittish; (also) coy.
• Silly, senseless, foolish.
• Beside oneself; out of one's senses; mad.
• Spiteful, malignant, mischievous, harmful.
• Hateful, distasteful, horrid.

Adverb

• Peevishly.

Origin

• From Middle English pevische, pevisse, pevysse, peivesshe, also peyuesshe, peeuish, of obscure origin. Perhaps from Middle English pew, pue, equivalent to pue + -ish. Cognate with Scots pevis, pevess, pevych, pevach, Scots pew, peu. See pue.
• An alternative etymology derives Middle English peyvesshe, as a possible corruption of Latin perversus ("perverted"). The meaning “fretful” develops in the 16th century.
• A third suggestion links the word to classical Latin expavidus (< ex- + pavidus) via an unrecorded variant with -ai- of Middle French espave ("stray [of animals]; foreign [of persons]; lost property, flotsam") (first attested 1283 in Old French; Modern French épave). The semantic connection is thought to be the behaviour of stray animals. Compare -ish suffix.