testy

(tĕs'tē)
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."

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adjective

1. Easily annoyed: choleric, irascible, peppery, quick-tempered, tetchy, touchy. See feelings.
2. 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.

adj

Definition: irritable, touchy
Antonyms: happy, pleasant

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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For a list of words related to testy, see:

• Cold, Unfriendly, Irritable, or Cruel
• Angry, Emotional, Aggressive, or Passionate

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See words rhyming with "testy."

  See crossword solutions for the clue Testy.

Dansk (Danish)
adj. - irritabel, opfarende

Nederlands (Dutch)
knorrig

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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