Word.ws English Dictionary

knappish

knappish adjective: peevish; snappish.

Adjective

knappish (comparative more knappish, superlative most knappish)

  1. (obsolete) Peevish; snappish.
    • [H]e reiected the Dukes requeſt with many ſpitefull and knappiſhe wordes, which ſo wounded the Dukes hart with hatred and miſtruſt, that he could neuer after endure to looke right on king Richard, but euer feared hys owne lyfe, […]1569, Richard Grafton, “Richarde the Thirde”, in A Chronicle at Large and Meere History of the Affayres of Englande […], volume II, London: […] Henry Denham, […], for Richarde Tottle and Humffrey...

Forms of knappish

comparativemore knappish
superlativemost knappish

Origin of knappish

From knap (“to strike”) + -ish.

Questions about knappish

What does knappish mean?
Knappish means peevish; snappish.
What part of speech is knappish?
Knappish is an adjective.

Words near knappish in the dictionary

  1. knappest
  2. knappeth
  3. knapping
  4. knapping it
  5. knappings
  6. knappish
  7. knappy
  8. knaps
  9. knaps it
  10. knapsack
  11. knapsack problem

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: knappish (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “knappish.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/knappish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.