a. [f. WASP sb. + -ISH.]
1. Pertaining to or resembling a wasp or some characteristic of it.
1596. Shaks., Tam. Shr., II. i. 211. If I be waspish, best beware my sting.
1681. Colvil, Whigs Supplic. (1751), 90. Thy waspish tongue will never fail To prat, to scold, revile and rail.
1823. Scott, Halidon Hill, I. ii. 354. Let a body of your chosen horse Make execution on yon waspish archers.
1865. Trollope, Belton Est., iv. 40. Her waist showed none of those waspish proportions.
1915. B. Digby, in Travel, July, 22/1. In the dock lay a pair of waspish, one-funnelled steamers.
2. esp. Quick to resent any trifling injury or affront; irascible, petulantly spiteful.
1566. Drant, Horace, Sat., a iv b. Satyre of writhled waspyshe Saturne may be namde.
a. 1568. Ascham, Scholem., I. (Arb.), 33. In aige, sone testie, very waspishe.
1673. Hickeringill, Greg. F. Greyb., 222. I know I had better have stirr’d in a Hornets nest, than thus to fret and anger the Modern Orthodox, the Leven of whose Religion makes them waspish, peevish, touchy, clamorous, and malicious slanderers and backbiters.
1751. Johnson, Rambler, No. 177, ¶ 11. Their conversation was, therefore, fretful and waspish, their behaviour brutal.
1808. Southey, Lett. (1856), II. 112. It is lamentable that that good heart of his should be coupled with so bad a judgement and so waspish a temper.
1838. Disraeli, in Corr. w. Sister, 23 Jan. (1886), 90. Sharp and waspish, he would have made a good petulant Opposition speech.
1861. Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxf., ix. Such a set of waspish, dogmatical, over-bearing fellows.
a. 1901. W. Bright, Age of Fathers (1903), II. 375. He had been charged by waspish enemies with ascribing a heavenly origin to the holy body of Christ.
Comb. 1610. Shaks., Temp., IV. i. 99. Her waspish headed sonne [sc. Cupid], has broke his arrowes, Swears he will shoote no more, but play with Sparrows.
b. Marked or characterized by virulence or petulance, spiteful.
1870. Even. Standard, Sept., 1. This waspish article created great indignation.
1880. E. C. Stedman, in Scribner’s Monthly, May, 118/2. They [‘The Literati’] are a prose Dunciad, waspish and unfair, but full of cleverness, and not without touches of magnanimity.
quasi-adv. 1855. Kingsley, Westw. Ho! ix. We may excuse Raleigh’s answering somewhat waspish to some quotation of Spenser’s from the three letters of ‘Immerito and G. H.’
Hence Waspishly adv.; Waspishness.
1593. Bilson, Govt. Christ’s Ch., ix. 116. That they be not cast out of the church by the weaknes, waspishnes (frowardnes) or rashnes of the bishop.
1653. W. Ramesey, Astrol. Restored, 334. Where he is pleased now and then … to vent his waspishness.
1684–94. trans. Plutarch’s Morals (1718), III. 24. To preserve her from being waspishly proud, out of a Conceit of her Fidelity and Vertue.
1797. Godwin, Enquirer, I. x. 87. A state of continual waspishness.
1827. De Quincey, Murder, Wks. 1862, IV. 24. Berkeley, feeling himself nettled by the waspishness of the old Frenchman, squared at him.
1883. Miss Broughton, Belinda, IV. iv. ‘Well, may I go?’ ‘Why do you ask?’ retorts he waspishly.
