Did you know?
In some parts of the southern United States, the word feist (pronounced to rhyme with heist) has been used since the 18th century as a term for a small dog used in hunting more diminutive game animals (such as squirrels). The word comes from the much older, now obsolete word fisting (pronounced as “feisting” would be) meaning “breaking wind,” which was used scornfully in the 16th and 17th centuries to describe gassy pooches. Feisty developed in the late 19th century, its flatulent origin lost, but its small-dog association still visible with a squint: the term conveys the spunk and determination that one may associate with a dog that manages to make its presence known, through its bark or its bite—or perhaps even its indifference to olfactory decorum—despite its small size.
Synonyms
Examples of feisty in a Sentence
Wynonna Judd, quoted in Rolling Stone, 8-22 July 1993
Humorist Cynthia Heimel never plays it safe, bless her feisty little heart. She's outrageous and hilarious, daring to say exactly what she and millions of other women really think …
—Donna Seaman, Booklist, 15 May 1993
… Milwaukee was the last major industrial city to elect a Socialist mayor—Frank P. Zeidler, a feisty octogenarian who teaches today at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee …
—Charles P. Pierce, Village Voice, 10 Mar. 1992
She never tired of hearing anecdotes from her childhood, and she particularly liked to hear how feisty she had been …
—Lorene Cary, Black Ice, 1991
The novel features a feisty heroine.
Even her opponents admire her feisty spirit.
Mike Jones, The Athletic, 5 Jan. 2025
The altercation with Bumrah on a feisty first day at the SCG was a case in point.
—Tim Ellis, Forbes, 4 Jan. 2025
So in late December, de Mey and a crew of three cast off from Tauranga, on New Zealand’s North Island Bay of Plenty, for the week-long voyage across the feisty Tasman Sea to Australia’s Sydney Harbor.
—Howard Walker, Robb Report, 30 Dec. 2024
The standout characters, in terms of behavior and psychology, are Player 149 (Kang Ae-sim), a feisty and sentimental old woman devoted to her not always dependable son, Player 007 (Yang Dong-geun).
—Tom Gliatto, People.com, 26 Dec. 2024
See all Example Sentences for feisty 
Articles Related to feisty
Dictionary Entries Near feisty
Cite this Entry
“Feisty.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feisty. Accessed 18 Jan. 2025.
Copy Citation
Share