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Peevish   /pˈivɪʃ/   Listen
adjective
Peevish  adj.  
1.
Habitually fretful; easily vexed or fretted; hard to please; apt to complain; querulous; petulant. "Her peevish babe." "She is peevish, sullen, froward."
2.
Expressing fretfulness and discontent, or unjustifiable dissatisfaction; as, a peevish answer.
3.
Silly; childish; trifling. (Obs.) "To send such peevish tokens to a king."
Synonyms: Querulous; petulant; cross; ill-tempered; testy; captious; discontented. See Fretful.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Peevish" Quotes from Famous Books



... waited for them with cold assurance, illumining their muddy road with scores of greasy, yellow, square eyes. The mud plashed under their feet as if in mocking commiseration. Hoarse exclamations of sleepy voices were heard; irritated, peevish, abusive language rent the air with malice; and, to welcome the people, deafening sounds floated about—the heavy whir of machinery, the dissatisfied snort of steam. Stern and somber, the black chimneys stretched their huge, thick ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... to his full height of six feet three, and, looking at him as he towered above me with his mane of disordered hair and flowing beard, I could not help thinking he rather resembled Samson in one of his peevish moods. The indignation that possessed him seemed sincere enough, but the circumstances of the case utterly bewildered me. I was gazing at him in perplexity when Henry came out of ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick

... of chinchilla fur that had come with her from Cuba. It was a bad sign, Margaret had learned, when the furs came out in warm weather. It meant a headache generally, and at any rate a chilly state of body, which was apt to be accompanied by a peevish state of mind. Still, she looked so pretty, peeping out of the soft gray nest! She was such a child, after all, in spite of her seventeen years,—decidedly, she ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards

... she said, and she laid her hand again upon Solita's head. "Take not the speech to heart. 'Tis but the plaint of a woman whose hair is withered from its brightness and who grows peevish in her loneliness. But open your mind to me, for you have twined about my heart even as your curls did but now twine and coil about my wrist, and the more for this pretty vanity of yours. Therefore tell me his name, that I ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... 70 But, if we have the liberty of choice, And all depends on our own single voice, To deem of every country as the same Is rank rebellion 'gainst the lawful claim Of Nature, and such dull indifference May be philosophy, but can't be sense. F. Weak and unjust distinction, strange design, Most peevish, most perverse, to undermine Philosophy, and throw her empire down By means of Sense, from whom she holds her crown, 80 Divine Philosophy! to thee we owe All that is worth possessing here below; Virtue and wisdom consecrate thy reign, Doubled each joy, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill


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