testy
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(tĕs'tē) 
adj., -ti·er, -ti·est.
Irritated, impatient, or exasperated; peevish: a testy cab driver; a testy refusal to help.
testiness tes'ti·ness n.
adj., -ti·er, -ti·est.
Irritated, impatient, or exasperated; peevish: a testy cab driver; a testy refusal to help.
[Alteration of Middle English testif, headstrong, from Old French testu, from teste, head, from Late Latin testa, skull. See teston.]
testily tes'ti·ly adv.testiness tes'ti·ness n.
WORD HISTORY To the casual eye testy and heady seem to have no connection; a more thoughtful examination reveals that both words refer to the head. The head in heady is easy to see in both the form and meanings of the word. The earliest sense, first recorded in a work composed before 1382, is "headlong, headstrong," which is clearly a "head" sense; but so is the better-known current sense "apt to go to the head, intoxicating." To see the head in testy, we must look back to the Old French word testu, the source of our word. Testu is derived from the Old French word teste, "head" (Modern French tête). In English testy developed another sense, "aggressive, contentious," which passed into the sense we are familiar with, "irritable."
Roget's Thesaurus:
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testy
adjective
- Easily annoyed: choleric, irascible, peppery, quick-tempered, tetchy, touchy. See feelings.
- Having or showing a bad temper: bad-tempered, cantankerous, crabbed, cranky, cross, disagreeable, fretful, grouchy, grumpy, ill-tempered, irascible, irritable, nasty, peevish, petulant, querulous, snappish, snappy, surly, ugly, waspish. Informal crabby, mean2. Idioms: out of sorts. See attitude/good attitude/bad attitude/neutral attitude.
Word Tutor:
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testy
IN BRIEF: Easily annoyed or angered; crabby.
Testy, querulous and given to praising the way things were when he was a boy.
— Horace (65-8 BC)
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Random House Word Menu:
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categories related to 'testy'
See crossword solutions for the clue Translations:
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Testy
Dansk (Danish)
adj. - irritabel, opfarende
Français (French)
adj. - irritable, irrité
Deutsch (German)
adj. - reizbar, gereizt
Ελληνική (Greek)
adj. - ευερέθιστος (κν. τσατίλας), εύθικτος
Italiano (Italian)
brontolone, irascibile
Português (Portuguese)
adj. - rabugento (m), impertinente, irritado (m)
Русский (Russian)
вспыльчивый, раздражительный
Español (Spanish)
adj. - gruñón, irritable, malhumorado
Svenska (Swedish)
adj. - lättretlig, lättstött, snarstucken
中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
易怒的, 暴躁的
中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
adj. - 易怒的, 暴躁的
한국어 (Korean)
adj. - 성미 급한, 신중하지 못한, 퉁명스러운
日本語 (Japanese)
adj. - 短気な, 不機嫌な
العربيه (Arabic)
(صفه) سريع الغضب, نكد, نزق
עברית (Hebrew)
adj. - רגזן, קצר-רוח, פגיע
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