Skittish

//ˈskɪtɪʃ// adj

adj ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Easily scared or startled; timid.

    "The dog likes people he knows, but he is skittish around strangers."

  2. 2
    Wanton; changeable; fickle.

    "How some men creep in skittish fortune’s hall, Whiles others play the idiots in her eyes!"

  3. 3
    Difficult to manage; tricky.

    "For everybody’s family doctor was remarkably clever, and was understood to have immeasurable skill in the management and training of the most skittish or vicious diseases."

Adjective
  1. 1
    unpredictably excitable (especially of horses) wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
excitableafraidagitableallergicanaphylacticanimated

Example

More examples

"Tom's cat Felicity is skittish, but once you've befriended her, she won't leave you alone."

Etymology

Probably from skite (“to move lightly and hurriedly; to move suddenly, particularly in an oblique direction (Scotland, Northern England)”) + -ish; compare skitter.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.