adjective

• (of a person or their behavior) childishly bad-tempered and petulant.

  ‘he comes across in his journal entries as spoiled and pettish’

  More example sentences

  • ‘The teacher admitted punishing the child, although he denied that the punishment was inappropriate, and he suggested that ‘these children are very pettish in manner, and I have no doubt that they sometimes tell stories at home.’’
  • ‘He could also be volatile, pettish and confounding.’
  • ‘Your statement that all the suffragist arguments "were long ago refuted and sent to limbo" is a mere pettish assertion, quite incapable of proof.’

  Synonyms

  bad-tempered, irascible, tetchy, testy, touchy, scratchy, grumpy, grouchy, moody, crotchety, in a mood, in a bad mood, cantankerous, curmudgeonly, ill-tempered, ill-natured, ill-humoured, peevish, having got out of bed on the wrong side, cross, fractious, disagreeable, pettish, crabbed, crabby, waspish, prickly, peppery, crusty, splenetic, shrewish, short-tempered, hot-tempered, quick-tempered, dyspeptic, choleric, bilious, liverish, cross-grained