tetchy

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

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

   Nurce: ...But as I said, when it did tast the wormwood on the nipple of my dug, & felt it bitter, pretty foole to see it teachie and fall out with Dugge...

2. 2
   adj

   easily irritated or annoyed

Etymology

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.