tetchy
Adjective Satellite
- easily irritated or annoyed
Adj
- Synonym of touchy: easily annoyed or irritated, peevish, testy, irascible; also (figurative) extremely sensitive, difficult to manage, use, or work.
Adjective
- Irritable or peevish, easily annoyed.
Examples
- After a bad draw, he became tetchy, snapping at anyone who offered advice.
Origin / Etymology
Uncertain, first attested as teachie in the 1597 first quarto versions of Romeo and Juliet and Richard III. Perhaps coined by Shakespeare. Also variously derived from English tetch (“tantrum, fit of anger”); from Scots tache (“blotch, fault”); from Middle English tatch (“blemish”) &c. under influence from touchy, in turn derived from Old French tache, from proposed Vulgar Latin *tacca, from Gothic 𐍄𐌰𐌹𐌺𐌽𐍃 (taikns, “sign”), from proposed Proto-Indo-European *deyḱ-.
Synonyms
cranky, fractious, irritable, nettlesome, peckish, peevish, pettish, petulant, scratchy, techy, testy, touchy
Scrabble Score: 14
tetchy: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordtetchy: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
tetchy: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary