pettishly
pettishly adverb: in a pettish manner; peevishly.
Adverb
pettishly (comparative more pettishly, superlative most pettishly)
- In a pettish manner; peevishly.
- Lady Mary turned pettishly away; no woman likes anybody but herself to depreciate a lover; it is personally an ill compliment.1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “Ranelagh”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 9
- "You are very dull this morning, Sheriff," said the youngest daughter of the house, who, being the baby and pretty, had grown pettishly privileged in speech.1895, S. R. Crockett, A Cry Across the Black Water
Examples of pettishly in a sentence
- `Why did you keep me standing there in the cold?' he asked pettishly.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
- [S]he complained pettishly of the heat and the flies and at length of the walk, and reduced Robert to the antics of an obsequious dog.1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, →OCLC, page 118:
Forms of pettishly
| comparative | more pettishly |
|---|---|
| superlative | most pettishly |
Origin of pettishly
From pettish + -ly.
Questions about pettishly
- What does pettishly mean?
- Pettishly means in a pettish manner; peevishly.
- How do you use pettishly in a sentence?
- `Why did you keep me standing there in the cold?' he asked pettishly.
- What part of speech is pettishly?
- Pettishly is an adverb.
Words near pettishly in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: pettishly (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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