poutish

comparative more poutish · superlative most poutish

1. Pouty (all senses).

   1913, Djuna Barnes, “‘Twingeless Twitchell’ and His Tantalizing Tweezers” in Alyce Barry (ed.) New York, Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1989, p. 22, “How slow the city is in summer,” said Ikrima in that pretty, poutish way which always appeals to the biggest sort of men.

   3 more examples

   […] those [women] that are sheepish, can very difficultly preserve themselves from being weather-born; and those that are waspish, are, as Solomon saith, a continual dropping; and the poutish are like a charnel-house, where sorrowful and glum silence make a solemn mourning:

   1671, Caleb Trenchfield, “Of the choice of a Wife”, in A Cap of Grey Hairs for a Green Head, London: Henry Eversden, page 117

   She was the most consummate mistress of the value of a shading of emphasis, an uplifted eyebrow, a tiny, poutish moue, or a dainty shrug of the shoulders, when used in conjunction with an unended sentence, in declaring and pointing an unspoken opinion.

   1899, Frank Kinsella, chapter 4, in The Degeneration of Dorothy, New York: G.W. Dillingham, page 106

   a poutish middle-class ire over my second-class status as a first-class taxpayer

   2008, K. G. Schneider, “The Outlaw Bride”, in Dave Eggers, editor, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, page 355