- 1沒耐性、動不動就發火的；不耐煩而語氣沖。常說某人「今天火氣有點大」「講話很衝」，或形容場面「氣氛火藥味重」（a testy meeting）。注意這是暫時的情緒，不是「脾氣很壞的人」那種長期個性。
A testy person is in the mood where small things set them off — short answers, a sharp tone, easily . It describes a temporary state far more often than a permanent character: someone is testy this morning because they slept badly, or grows testy after the third silly question. It is not the same as angry. Testy is smaller, drier, and shows itself in how a person speaks rather than in shouting. Besides people, it fits things people say and situations they are in: a testy reply, a testy exchange between two ministers, testy talks. In news writing, calling a meeting testy is a polite way of saying the two sides snapped at each other. There is a mild age flavour to it: it is used a lot about older men, and about important people who are tired of being questioned. It is somewhat formal and much more common in writing than in everyday conversation; in speech a student would more likely hear , snappy, or 'in a bad mood'.
組成From Middle English testif, 'headstrong', from Old French testu, built on teste, 'head'. Modern French still has tête for head and têtu for stubborn. So the original picture is not a test at all — it is someone who leads with their head, who pushes back.
同家族的字
- testno connection at all, despite the spelling — testy comes from a word for 'head'
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
testyadj/ˈtɛsti/
- 1
Easily annoyed, irritable.
- 2
Marked by impatience or ill humor.
- He made testy remarks.
- Otherwise, we could end up with a repeat of what happened with social media companies after the 2016 election — a collision of Silicon Valley power and Washington ignorance, which resulted in nothing but gridlock and testy hearings.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。