The adverb of waspish: to say or do something in a sharp, irritable, stinging way. It almost always attaches to a verb of speaking — said waspishly, replied waspishly, asked waspishly, remarked waspishly — and its natural home is fiction. Novelists reach for it when they want the reader to hear the tone of a line without spelling out the whole mood: "'How clever of you,' she said waspishly" tells you in one word that the compliment was a sting. You will very rarely hear it in real conversation; people there say snapped, said sharply, said sarcastically. It can also colour a whole behaviour rather than one line — he waspishly refused every suggestion — but that is less common. Because it is a written, slightly bookish word, using it in a spoken sentence can sound as if you are quoting a book. That is not a mistake; it is just worth knowing what effect you are making. For students, the useful skill is recognising it in reading, and reading the character correctly when you do.

尖酸地、刻薄地（帶刺地說話）；多用於小說敘述，口語較常說 sharply、sarcastically。