Word.ws English Dictionary

prickish

prickish adjective: having the characteristics of a prick; being unpleasant, rude or annoying.

Adjective

prickish (comparative more prickish, superlative most prickish)

  1. (informal, vulgar) having the characteristics of a prick; being unpleasant, rude or annoying.
    • The lost cause of psychoanalysis, so infused with a non-intellectual bias, dominated by partisan interests, and characterized by a stunning degree of ill-will and prickish behaviour, has finally made way for a new cause – actually an old one – that of rigorous, informed scholarship.2005, Todd Dufresne, Killing Freud, A&C Black, page 162

Forms of prickish

comparativemore prickish
superlativemost prickish

Origin of prickish

From prick + -ish.

Words formed from prickish

Questions about prickish

What does prickish mean?
Prickish means having the characteristics of a prick; being unpleasant, rude or annoying.
What part of speech is prickish?
Prickish is an adjective.

Words near prickish in the dictionary

  1. pricking up
  2. pricking up one's ears
  3. pricking-up
  4. prickingly
  5. prickings
  6. prickish
  7. prickishness
  8. prickle
  9. prickle cell
  10. prickle cells
  11. prickle-cell

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: prickish (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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