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tful; easily vexed or fretted; hard to please; apt to complain; querulous; petulant. "Her peevish babe." Wordsworth. She is peevish, sullen, froward. Shak.

In a peevish manner. Shak.

The quality of being peevish; disposition to murmur; sourness of temper.

y sort; to be ill or indisposed or in trouble. When he ails ever so little . . . he is so peevish. Richardson.

A peevish, ill-natured person. [North of Eng.]

Characterized by or manifesting, sourness, peevishness, or moroseness; harsh; cross; cynical; -- applied to feelings, disposition, or manners. Crabbed age and youth can not live together. Shak.

Characterized by, or in a state of, peevishness, fretfullness, or ill humor; as, a cross man or woman. He had received a cross answer from his mistress. Jer. Taylor.

Athwart; adversely; unfortunately; peevishly; fretfully; with ill humor.

The quality or state of being cross; peevishness; fretfulness; ill humor.

Cross; peevish. [Prov. Eng.] Halliwell.

Having a hard exterior, or a short, rough manner, though kind at heart; snappish; peevish; surly. Thou crusty batch of nature, what's the news Shak.

Peevishly; vexatiously; detestably. [Obs.] "Curstfully mad." Marston.

Peevishness; malignity; frowardness; crabbedness; surliness. [Obs.] Shak.

Crabbed; peevish. [Prov. Eng.]

Peevish; cross; vexatious; quarrelsome. [Obs.] Shak. Is Pompey grown so malapert, so frampel Beau. & Fl.

f the mind; a whim of fancy; a capricious prank; a vagary or caprice. She is restless and peevish, and sometimes in a freak will instantly change her habitation. Spectator.

To be vexed; to be chafed or irritated; to be angry; to utter peevish expressions. He frets, he fumes, he stares, he stamps the ground. Dryden.

Disposed to fret; ill-humored; peevish; angry; in a state of vexation; as, a fretful temper. -- Fret"ful-ly, adv. -- Fret"ful-ness, n.

Peevish; froward. [Obs.] Clarendon.

willing to yield or compIy with what is required or is reasonable; perverse; disobedient; peevish; as, a froward child. A froward man soweth strife. Prov. xvi. 28. A froward retention of custom is as turbulent a thing as innovation. Bacon.