(tĕsˈtē)
adjective tes·ti·er,
tes·ti·est Irritated, impatient, or exasperated; peevish: a testy cab driver; a testy refusal to help.
Related Forms:
Word History: To the casual eye
testy and
heady seem to have no connection; a more thoughtful examination reveals that both words refer to the head. The
head in
heady is easy to see in both the form and meanings of the word. The earliest sense, first recorded in a work composed before 1382, is “headlong, headstrong,” which is clearly a “head” sense; but so is the better-known current sense “apt to go to the head, intoxicating.” To see the
head in
testy, we must look back to the Old French word
testu, the source of our word.
Testu is derived from the Old French word
teste, “head” (Modern French
tête). In English
testy developed another sense, “aggressive, contentious,” which passed into the sense we are familiar with, “irritable.”
