tetchy
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
- tetchily adverb
- tetchiness noun
Etymology
Origin of tetchy
Explanation
If you're feeling tetchy, you're irritable or easily annoyed. Stepping in a puddle on your way to school and spending the whole day with cold, wet socks might make you tetchy. Is your brother cranky and no fun to be around today? He's tetchy. This adjective is similar to words like testy, peevish and grumpy. It's another way to describe your fractious friend or your snappy sister. The origin of tetchy is unclear, but most experts suspect it comes from the Scots word tache, "blotch" or "fault."
Vocabulary lists containing tetchy
"The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet," Vocabulary from Act 1
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The Incredibly Human Henson Blayze
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The Red Car to Hollywood
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
When they meet Thursday night in Milan, these tetchy border rivals will have met in the Olympic final seven out of eight times since the sport was introduced at the 1998 Games.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 17, 2026
In a sometimes tetchy exchange, Sherborne put to the former editor that a series of journalists did not obey the ban and continued paying private investigators and freelance journalists for unlawful information.
From BBC • Feb. 11, 2026
Porter apologized and expressed remorse for her tetchy behavior.
From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 28, 2026
Stokes said he was shell-shocked in some tetchy post-match media interactions, comments that were used against the captain as England lost the PR battle in the days after the Test.
From BBC • Dec. 21, 2025
Orff had his tetchy criticisms of the regime - not directed at its deranged policies, mind, but because it wouldn’t roll out his children’s music programme Schulwerk into all state schools in the Reich.
From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
