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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

tetchy.

Synonym of touchy: easily annoyed or irritated, peevish, testy, irascible; also (figurative) extremely sensitive, difficult to manage, use, or work.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈtɛt͡ʃi/
  1. Synonym of touchy: easily annoyed or irritated, peevish, testy, irascible; also (figurative) extremely sensitive, difficult to manage, use, or work.

    Commonwealth · Ireland · Southern-US · UK
Where this word comes from

Uncertain, first attested as teachie in the 1597 first quarto versions of Romeo and Juliet and Richard III. Perhaps coined by Shakespeare. Also variously derived from English tetch (“tantrum, fit of anger”); from Scots tache (“blotch, fault”); from Middle English tatch (“blemish”) &c. under influence from touchy.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.