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Apr 24, 2014
This week's theme
Words to describe people

This week's words
tractable
bombastic
impecunious
petulant
incorrigible

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

petulant

PRONUNCIATION:
(PECH-uh-lent)

MEANING:
adjective: Bad-tempered; cranky.

ETYMOLOGY:
[From Latin petere (to seek, assail). Ultimately from the Indo-European root pet- (to rush or fly), which also gave us feather, petition, compete, perpetual, propitious, pteridology, pinnate, and lepidopterology. Earliest documented use: 1598.

USAGE:
"Idol, like the petulant child who can't understand that her antics have ceased to be entertaining, kept trying to sell it."
Jodi Bradbury; American Idol; The Christian Science Monitor (Boston); Feb 14, 2014.

See more usage examples of petulant in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
I hold that gentleman to be the best-dressed whose dress no one observes. -Anthony Trollope, novelist (1815-1882)

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