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adjective

Waspish adj.

Resembling a wasp in form; having a slender waist, like a wasp.

Quick to resent a trifling affront; characterized by snappishness; irritable; irascible; petulant; snappish. "He was naturally a waspish and hot man." "Much do I suffer, much, to keep in peace This jealous, waspish, wrong-head, rhyming race."

Synonyms: Snappish; petulant; irritable; irascible; testy; peevish; captious.

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Etymology of 'Waspish'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Waspish" Quotes from Famous Books

... Wi' noa woman to sweeten his life; Till one day a smart lass chonced his winder to pass. An he cried, "That's the wench for my wife!" Soa he show'd her his bags runnin ovver wi' gold, An he axt her this question reight plump; "Tho' awm ugly an waspish, an getten soa old, Will ta come an be ...

— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... hole with a waspish swiftness, though there was a wild, frightened look in his eyes; and as he advanced towards the barricade he drew out a bulldog pistol and held ...

— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... word for it. But, after all, it consists chiefly in the knack of the thing. One must have the wit 'from such a sharp and waspish word as No to pluck the sting.' I do it every day, and I really think ...

— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... proving shy Of merit that had not yet clipt its shell. Day after day, in weather foul or fair, With lackeys, hucksters, and the commoner sort, At Whitehall and Westminster he stood guard, Reading men's faces with most anxious eye. There the lords swarmed, some waspish and some bland, But none would pause at plucking of the sleeve To hearken to him, and the lad had died On London stones for lack of crust to gnaw But that he caught the age's malady, The something magical that was in air, And made men poets, heroes, demi-gods— Made Shakespeare, Rawleigh, Grenvile, ...

— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... astonishment, dread, or whatever the feeling was which moved him, to ooze forth in a cold and deathly perspiration which robbed his cheeks of colour, and cast a bluish shadow over his narrow and retreating temples; while the thin and waspish man, caught in the same trap (for trap I saw it was), shouted aloud in his ill-timed mirth, the false and cruel character of which would have made me shudder, if all expression of feeling on my part had not been held in check by the interest I immediately experienced in the display ...

— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

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