touchy

• POS: Adjective
• HYPHEN: touch=y

CIDE DICTIONARY

touchy, a. [For techy, tetchy.].

 Peevish; irritable; irascible; techy; apt to take fire.  [1913 Webster]
"It may be said of Dryden that he was at no time touchy about personal attacks."  [1913 Webster]

OXFORD DICTIONARY

touchy, adj. (touchier, touchiest) apt to take offence; over-sensitive.

Derivative

touchily adv. touchiness n.

Etymology

perh. alt. of TETCHY after TOUCH

THESAURUS

touchy

agitable, allergic, anaphylactic, argumentative, bad-tempered, bearish, cantankerous, captious, chancy, choleric, close, contentious, crabbed, crabby, cranky, critical, cross, crusty, dangerous, delicate, dicey, disputatious, dyspeptic, edgy, emotional, emotionally unstable, empathetic, empathic, eruptive, excitable, explosive, frightening, goosy, grouchy, hair-raising, hairbreadth, hairy, harmful, hazardous, high-mettled, high-spirited, high-strung, highly emotional, hot-tempered, hyperesthetic, hyperpathic, hypersensitive, inflammable, irascible, irritable, itchy, mettlesome, miffy, nerve-racking, nervous, on slippery ground, on thin ice, overrefined, oversensible, oversensitive, overtender, parlous, passible, peevish, perturbable, pettish, petulant, precarious, prickly, querulous, quick-tempered, ratty, refined, responsive, risky, sensitive, short-tempered, skittish, slippery, slippy, snappish, snarling, splenetic, startlish, supersensitive, sympathetic, tactful, temperamental, tender, tense, terrifying, testy, tetchy, thin-skinned, ticklish, touch-and-go, tricky, uncertain, unpredictable, unsafe, unsure, volatile, volcanic, waspish

ROGET THESAURUS

touchy

Irascibility

N irascibility, irascibleness, temper, crossness, susceptibility, procacity, petulance, irritability, tartness, acerbity, protervity, pugnacity, excitability, bad temper, fiery temper, crooked temper, irritable, temper, genus irritabile, hot blood, ill humor, asperity, churlishness, huff, a word and a blow, Sir Fretful Plagiary, brabbler, Tartar, shrew, vixen, virago, termagant, dragon, scold, Xantippe, porcupine, spitfire, fire eater, fury, irascible, bad-tempered, ill-tempered, irritable, susceptible, excitable, thin-skinned, fretful, fidgety, on the fret, hasty, overhasty, quick, warm, hot, testy, touchy, techy, tetchy, like touchwood, like tinder, huffy, pettish, petulant, waspish, snappish, peppery, fiery, passionate, choleric, shrewish, sudden and quick in quarrel, querulous, captious, moodish, quarrelsome, contentious, disputatious, pugnacious, cantankerous, exceptious, restiff, churlish, cross, cross as crabs, cross as two sticks, cross as a cat, cross as a dog, cross as the tongs, fractious, peevish, acari=atre, in a bad temper, sulky, angry, resentful, resentive, vindictive, Int, pish!, a vieux comptes nouvelles disputes, quamvis tegatur proditur vultu furor, vino tortus et ira.