Feisty

How to spell feisty

6 letters · 2 syllables

66 of the 149 people asked to spell feisty in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

The most common mistake is fiesty. The letters people get wrong are highlighted.

fiesty feisty

What people typed instead

• fiesty48 people

How to pronounce feisty

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does feisty mean?

1. adjectiveLively, spirited, and willing to argue or stand up for oneself.

Feisty in a sentence

• The feisty negotiator refused to accept the first offer on the table.

• Despite her small stature, the new manager proved remarkably feisty in meetings.

Where does feisty come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Feisty has a surprisingly earthy past. It grew from the American dialect noun 'feist', a word for a small, excitable, yappy dog, which was itself a shortening of older phrases like 'fysting cur', meaning a worthless little dog. That 'fysting' element traces back through Middle English to the Old English verb 'fistan', which bluntly meant to break wind; the small dog was, in effect, named for being a smelly little nuisance. Over the 1800s in the United States the adjective 'feisty' shifted away from that crude root and came to describe a person who, like the bristling little dog, was lively, touchy, and ready for a scrap. The modern sense is now affectionate or admiring, suggesting spirited and full of nerve, with the original odour of the word entirely forgotten. The spelling trap is the 'ei' vowel cluster, which follows the 'sound' pattern rather than the more familiar 'ie'.

How the word is built

• feist (a small, snappy dog)
• -y (adjective-forming suffix)

People who misspell feisty also struggle with

Of the Spelling Garden players who got feisty wrong the first time, this is how many also got each of these wrong.

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