touchy

from WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006)
touchy
    adj 1: quick to take offense [syn: {huffy}, {thin-skinned},
           {feisty}, {touchy}]
    2: difficult to handle; requiring great tact; "delicate
       negotiations with the big powers";"hesitates to be explicit
       on so ticklish a matter"; "a touchy subject" [syn:
       {delicate}, {ticklish}, {touchy}]
    
from The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Touchy \Touch"y\, a. [For techy, tetchy.]
   Peevish; irritable; irascible; techy; apt to take fire.
   [Colloq.]
   [1913 Webster]

         It may be said of Dryden that he was at no time touchy
         about personal attacks.                  --Saintsbury.
   [1913 Webster]
    
from Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
104 Moby Thesaurus words for "touchy":
      agitable, allergic, anaphylactic, argumentative, bad-tempered,
      bearish, cantankerous, captious, chancy, choleric, close,
      contentious, crabbed, crabby, cranky, critical, cross, crusty,
      dangerous, delicate, dicey, disputatious, dyspeptic, edgy,
      emotional, emotionally unstable, empathetic, empathic, eruptive,
      excitable, explosive, frightening, goosy, grouchy, hair-raising,
      hairbreadth, hairy, harmful, hazardous, high-mettled,
      high-spirited, high-strung, highly emotional, hot-tempered,
      hyperesthetic, hyperpathic, hypersensitive, inflammable, irascible,
      irritable, itchy, mettlesome, miffy, nerve-racking, nervous,
      on slippery ground, on thin ice, overrefined, oversensible,
      oversensitive, overtender, parlous, passible, peevish, perturbable,
      pettish, petulant, precarious, prickly, querulous, quick-tempered,
      ratty, refined, responsive, risky, sensitive, short-tempered,
      skittish, slippery, slippy, snappish, snarling, splenetic,
      startlish, supersensitive, sympathetic, tactful, temperamental,
      tender, tense, terrifying, testy, tetchy, thin-skinned, ticklish,
      touch-and-go, tricky, uncertain, unpredictable, unsafe, unsure,
      volatile, volcanic, waspish

    

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