Definition of "pettish" [pet•tish]

• Ill-tempered; peevish. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• ""Becoming George Sand" offers sketchy vignettes of Sand's excursion to Mallorca with the pettish and ailing composer Frédéric Chopin, but these scenes shed no light on Maria's problems, which are based not on passion but on lying."
• "He thinks her little pettish ways are mere girlish moods; but when she becomes his wife, and reveals her selfish and cruel nature, he is grieved and hurt to think fate has been so unkind to him."
• "She had known for some time her brother was weak, that what her aunt had called innocence was really spoiled pettish childishness; that being a boy, the firstborn, and beautiful, Nate had always been the prince of his own tiny kingdom."