shirty

He's a good client, you know, and a very nice fellow, but he was quite shirty about it.

I tried to ask why it thought this and it got very shirty.'

John got a bit shirty about the ten pound or something, he reckoned his wife had didn't he?

"He was frightfully shirty," concluded the note jubilantly.

The Cabinet were very shirty and reading between the lines told him that it was us that pulled the coals out of the fire.'

"Hugh, you got so shirty a while ago that I didn't tell you one thing I have in mind."

'The Patrician gets really shirty about ethnic trouble,' said Sergeant Colon moodily.

I don't see why the settlers are so shirty about us keeping our distance," Herne Lordling grumbled.'

The earliest 19th-century uses are British, and P. G. Wodehouse in a 1934 Jeeves novel had a character say, "But don't tell me that when he saw how shirty she was about it, the chump didn't back down?"