Waspish

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Waspish \Wasp"ish\, a.
     1. Resembling a wasp in form; having a slender waist, like a
        wasp.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. Quick to resent a trifling affront; characterized by


        snappishness; irritable; irascible; petulant; snappish.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              He was naturally a waspish and hot man. --Bp. Hall.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              Much do I suffer, much, to keep in peace
              This jealous, waspish, wrong-head, rhyming race.
                                                    --Pope.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     Syn: Snappish; petulant; irritable; irascible; testy;
          peevish; captious.
          [1913 Webster] -- {Wasp"ish*ly}, adv. --
          {Wasp"ish*ness}, n.
          [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  waspish
       adj : very irritable; "bristly exchanges between the White House
             and the press"; "he became prickly and spiteful";
             "witty and waspish about his colleagues" [syn: {bristly},
              {prickly}, {splenetic}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  40 Moby Thesaurus words for "waspish":
     bearish, bitchy, cankered, cantankerous, churlish, contrary,
     crabbed, cranky, cross, cross-grained, crotchety, crusty, cussed,
     disagreeable, excitable, feisty, fractious, fretful, huffish,
     huffy, impatient, irascible, irritable, malicious, mean, ornery,
     peevish, perverse, pettish, petulant, querulous, sharp, snappish,
     spiteful, spleeny, splenetic, testy, ugly, vinegarish, vinegary