Pesty

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Creating discomfort through relentless annoyance or troublesome behavior
2. Tending to provoke irritation by persistent or bothersome actions
3. Characterized by behavior that is bothersome and likely to provoke frustration

Etymology: "Pesty" is a plain formation: the noun "pest" with the suffix "-y" added, meaning something that behaves like a pest. The suffix itself has a long pedigree in English. It traces back through Old English "-ig" and Proto-West Germanic and Proto-Germanic forms to a very old root shared with words for "full of" or "having the quality of," and it became a productive way to turn nouns into adjectives. The noun "pest" is the more interesting half. It came into English from Latin "pestis," meaning plague or deadly epidemic, and it kept that sense of a destructive scourge for centuries. The sense of a tiresome person or nuisance is a later extension, so "pesty" is a little like a plague-word that has been domesticated into describing an irritating child or a buzzing insect.

Synonyms: annoying, irritating, troublesome, vexatious, nuisance

Antonyms: pleasant, enjoyable, delightful, satisfying, agreeable