Pesky

How to spell pesky

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce pesky

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pesky mean?

1. adjectiveAnnoying or troublesome in a minor but persistent way.

Pesky in a sentence

• A pesky wasp kept circling the picnic table all afternoon.

• He finally fixed the pesky leak under the kitchen sink.

Where does pesky come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Pesky is a colloquial word that surfaced in American English in the late 1700s, and its exact birth is a little murky. The most widely accepted explanation is that it grew out of 'pest', meaning a person, animal, or thing that causes irritation, with the familiar adjective ending -y attached to give the sense 'pest-like'. 'Pest' itself traces back to the Latin pestis, which literally meant 'plague' or 'deadly disease', the same dramatic word that gives us 'pestilence', before its meaning softened in English to mere nuisance. Some scholars also link pesky to dialect forms like 'pesk', and a few connect it loosely to 'pettish', meaning fretful, so the trail is not perfectly clean. Because the spelling simply follows the sound, the only thing to remember is the plain 'k' in the middle rather than any fancier letter.

How the word is built

• pesk- (variant of 'pest', a troublesome thing)
• -y (adjective suffix)