| 释义 |
snippy, a.|ˈsnɪpɪ|
[f. snip v. Cf. Du. snippig (Fris. snippich) snappish.]
1. dial. Parsimonious, mean; covetous.
1727Bailey (vol. II), Snippy, parcimonious, niggardly. 1825–in dial. glossaries, etc. (Eng. Dial. Dict.).
2. dial. and colloq. Fault-finding, snappish, sharp; putting on airs, supercilious.
1848Bartlett Dict. Amer. 318 Snippy, finical; and substantively, a finical person. A woman's word. 1887Gunter Mr. Barnes xx, So dictatorial!.. And so snippy! 1894P. L. Ford Hon. Peter Stirling xxx. 171 Before I could possibly have said or done anything to offend her, she treated me in the snippiest way. 1896Harper's Mag. June 23/2 She's too snippy for me. 1934E. Carr Jrnl. 12 Feb. in Hundreds & Thousands (1966) 95, I don't want to be mean and snippy but I don't think they know. 1952H. Garner Yellow Sweater 93 There followed an explanation of why her son hadn't been attending school as regular as he should, and how snippy the teacher was getting to be. 1961Insurance Salesman Jan. 47/1 One of our clerks was a snippy, opinionated girl who kept everything unsettled and rubbed everyone the wrong way. 1970J. Potts Affair of Heart viii. 65, I must say, she was very snippy. Downright rude. 1974Times 28 Feb. 10/6 This irritates Mr Heath... Privately, he is quite snippy about it. 1977D. Ramsay You can't call it Murder i. 52 Daughter Sarah described as uppity and snippy.
3. Scrappy, fragmentary, snippety.
1886Pall Mall G. 20 May 2/1 Paragraphs and very short articles which may fairly be regarded as ‘snippy’ bits.
Add: Hence ˈsnippily adv.; ˈsnippiness n.
1935E. Carr Jrnl. 24 Jan. (1966) 169, I suppose first we must climb to the rise above the trivial snippiness, quit bickering and open our eyes wider and get stiller—quit fussing. 1977D. E. Westlake Nobody's Perfect (1978) ii. 26 It was an English-accented female voice that answered, snippily, saying, ‘Hold on for Mister Stonewiler, please.’ 1985N.Y. Times 21 Apr. ii. 22/3 The novelist Kingsley Amis recently wrote to The Times of London snippily opining that subsidized artists were less interested in pleasing the public than in impressing ‘critics, colleagues, friends, experts, bureaucrats’. 1987Los Angeles Times (San Diego County ed.) 13 Oct. vi. 3/1 Vanda Eggington is a natural comedienne, at one point playing a self-righteous church lady with Gilda Radner snippiness. |
