feisty

[fahy-stee] /ˈfaɪ sti/
adjective, feistier, feistiest.
1.
full of animation, energy, or courage; spirited; spunky; plucky:
The champion is faced with a feisty challenger.
2.
ill-tempered; pugnacious.
3.
troublesome; difficult:
feisty legal problems.
Origin
1895-1900, Americanism; feist + -y1
Related forms
feistily, adverb
feistiness, noun
Examples from the web for feisty
  • From sweet little chicks they turned into loud and feisty roosters.
  • But the band needed singers, a robust vocal outfit to tame the music's feisty bucking.
  • His state's feisty public-sector unions enjoy extremely favorable laws governing their collective bargaining.
  • Aileen, usually chipper and feisty, was visibly anxious.
  • Instead the author says it might have been to keep his troops from getting too feisty.
  • She was a feisty director whose strength of character infused her museum and brought it to greatness.
  • There are seven billion of us, a few feisty hundred could repopulate.
  • Start with a live, preferably feisty, specimen no matter which method you choose.
  • At lunch, business types roll up for tacos of seared beef with feisty tomato salsa.
  • Colloquial term for a feisty, overachieving player with a good motor who thrives as a kick-coverage guy.
British Dictionary definitions for feisty

feisty

/ˈfaɪstɪ/
adjective (informal) feistier, feistiest
1.
lively, resilient, and self-reliant
2.
(US & Canadian) frisky
3.
(US & Canadian) irritable
Word Origin
C19: from dialect feist, fist small dog; related to Old English fīsting breaking wind
Word Origin and History for feisty
adj.

1896, "aggressive, exuberant, touchy," American English, with -y (2) + feist "small dog," earlier fice, fist (American English, 1805); short for fysting curre "stinking cur," attested from 1520s, from Middle English fysten, fisten "break wind" (mid-15c.); related to Old English fisting "stink," from Proto-Germanic *fistiz- "a fart," said to be from PIE *pezd- (see fart), but there are difficulties.

The 1811 slang dictionary defines fice as "a small windy escape backwards, more obvious to the nose than ears; frequently by old ladies charged on their lap-dogs." Cf. also Danish fise "to blow, to fart," and obsolete English aske-fise, "fire-tender," literally "ash-blower" (early 15c.), from an unrecorded Norse source, used in Middle English for a kind of bellows, but originally "a term of reproach among northern nations for an unwarlike fellow who stayed at home in the chimney corner" [OED].

Slang definitions & phrases for feisty

feisty

adjective

Truculent; irascible: They said the president was a feisty little chap/ He was having trouble with a feisty old lady who didn't want to move

[1896+; fr feist, found by 1770, ''small, worthless cur, esp a lapdog'']