buggish

Adjective

buggish (comparative more buggish, superlative most buggish)

1. Characteristic of or resembling a bug; buglike.
   • 'What?' Budd whispered, his eyes on the buggish headlights of the harvesting threshers.1996, Jeffery Deaver, A Maiden's Grave
   • Clarence looks into his rearview mirror and finds that the small buggish car is still following him, and its horn beeps every few minutes.2000, Lana Witt, The Heart of a Thirsty Woman, page 177
2. (dialectal, obsolete) Uppity.
   • Meanwhile, rumour had been tramping about with her crescit eundô; and, long before the Faculty received our Scytala, they had heard her cry— "The Board has told Major Thorntree, the Faculty shall be tried and turned right out, and shall be sued for damages done the school and the State, and—...1843, Baynard Rush Hall, The New Purchase: Or, Seven and a Half Years in the Far West, page 183
   • "Thought you big-buggish, and set up, with all those fine things; and I should have felt just so," answered Mrs. Thorp.1873 March, Ann S. Stephens, “The Lost Inheritance”, in The Peterson magazine, volume 63, number 3, page 216

   Synonyms:

   airy, arrogant, chesty, authoritarian, biggity, big-headed, blustery, turgescent, boastful, lordly

3. (obsolete) Frightening; like a bugbear.
   • Of father Anchises thee goast and grislye resemblaunce, When the day dooth vannish, when lights eke starrye be twinckling, In sleepe mee monisheth, with visadge buggish he feareth.1879, Edward Arber, The English Scholar's Library of Old and Modern Works, page 107
   • The buggish bishops cannot make such-a-one afraid; because they cannot take away one hair from our head until God give them leave, which I am sure He will not do, until such time as He shall see it most to His glory, and the profit of His saints; ane when that time is once coe, who will desire to...1884, Letters of the martyrs of the English Church, page 321

   Synonyms:

   affreux, alarming, spine-tingling, appalling, awful, eldritch, butt-clenching, buttock-clenching, dismayful, dreadful

4. (slang, jazz) Crazy.
   • Now asked sweet mama to let me be her kid She says I might get buggish I couldn't keep it hid.1930, Sleepy John Estes, Milk Cow Blues
   • (see title)1938, Willie Bee (James), Washboard Sam, My baby's getting buggish

   Synonyms:

   5150, bananas, barking, barking mad, buggy, bughouse, barmy, batchy, batpoop, bats