Pronunciation Adjective
skittish
- Easily scared or startled; timid.
- The cat likes people he knows, but he is skittish around strangers.
- 1557, Roger Edgeworth, Sermons Very Fruitfull, Godly, and Learned, London: Robert Caly, The fiftenth treatice or Sermon,
- All such be like a skittish starting horse, whiche coming ouer a bridge, wil start for a shadowe, or for a stone lying by him, and leapeth ouer on the other side into the water, & drowneth both horse and man.
- Wanton; changeable; fickle
- circa 1601 William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act III, Scene 3,
- How some men creep in skittish fortune’s hall,
- Whiles others play the idiots in her eyes!
- 1785, William Cowper, The Task (poem), London: J. Johnson, Book 2, p. 69,
- […] ’Tis pitiful
- To court a grin, when you should wooe a soul;
- To break a jest, when pity would inspire
- Pathetic exhortation; and t’ address
- The skittish fancy with facetious tales,
- When sent with God’s commission to the heart.
- circa 1601 William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act III, Scene 3,
- Difficult to manage; tricky.
- 1872, George Eliot, Middlemarch, Book 2, Chapter 15,
- For everybody’s family doctor was remarkably clever, and was understood to have immeasurable skill in the management and training of the most skittish or vicious diseases.
- 1872, George Eliot, Middlemarch, Book 2, Chapter 15,
- (easily scared or startled) spookish, jumpy, skittery, skitterish, squirrelly
- French: timide
- German: scheu, schreckhaft
- Italian: schivo, riluttante, timoroso
- Russian: пугли́вый
- Spanish: temeroso, tímido
- German: launisch, unberechenbar
- Italian: capriccioso, volubile
- Spanish: caprichoso, voluble
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