tetchy

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Examples

  • She was so self-effacing that it was hard to believe that she was the headliner on the scene. —  Grace Slick The Biography
  • 'Maybe you'd be tetchy and snappy and tearful if you'd been through what she's been in the past two and a half years,' Smith said sourly. —  Where Eagles Dare
  • 'Maybe she'd be less tetchy and tearful if she knew a bit more about what's going on.' —  Where Eagles Dare
  • When there were only three of us again, my father's attitude toward me became more virulently critical, and his humor grew more tetchy, only really coming in to his own when there was entertaining to be done. —  An Autobiography
  • I feel pretty goddamned tetchy. —  The End of the Pier
 

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Tetchy has been looked up 477 times, favorited twice, listed 31 times, and commented on twice.

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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (1)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Probably from Middle English tache, teche, blemish (influenced by touchy), from Old French tache, teche, from Vulgar Latin *tacca, from Gothic taikns, sign; see deik- in Indo-European roots.
 

Pronunciations
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/ˈtɛtʃi/
by American Heritage

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