miffyadj.

1810 J. Beresford Bibliosophia 119 And very lucky it was, by the way (considering how very miffy those Ladies are said to have been).

1836 T. C. Haliburton Clockmaker 1st Ser. xxvi. 173 Well, says I, I'll tell you if you won't be miffy with me. Miffy with you indeed, said he, I guess I'll be very much obliged to you.

1838 T. C. Haliburton Clockmaker 2nd Ser. in R. Brown & D. Bennett Anthol. Canad. Lit. in Eng. (1982) 69 At that he looked up to me quite hard for a space, without sayin' a word, but pressed his lips together quite miffy like, as if he was strivin' for to keep old Adam down, and turned short off and walked away.

1884 Cent. Mag. Oct. 941/1 It's all right, anyhow. The old duffer deserves a rub for being so miffy.

1992 F. Kippax Butcher's Bill (BNC) 125 Hermann Goering was a little on the miffy side when Karlheinz Pintsch rang up before he'd finished.

1996 St. Louis (Missouri) Post-Dispatch 2 Apr. 1 d So when I was called back for the fourth audition, I got sort of miffy and I said, ‘Now look, I have more things to do than keep running down to Channel 5’.

1850 G. Glenny Hand-bk. Flower Garden 220 This [sc. Lotus Jacobæus] is rather a delicate, or what is called a ‘miffy’ plant, being liable to damp off in winter.

1871 S. Hibberd Amateur's Flower Garden 146 M[yosotis] dissitiflora..is a most valuable species for early flowers, but ‘miffy’, and therefore needing perpetual renewal.

1894 R. D. Blackmore Perlycross II. xii. 263 The slightest change of human weather is inevitably fatal to our very miffy plant [sc. gratitude].

1907 R. J. Farrer My Rock-garden i. 19 A sound perennial in one place, soil and climate, but a miffy delicate untrustworthy creature half a mile away.

1922 M. Temple Shallowdale iii. 38 There are mighty few of..your miffy rock-plants that are half so fine as the cowslips and the daffodils we scarcely deign to notice.

1934 Gardeners' Chron. 19 May 330/3 A few plants invariably become ‘miffy’, from no apparent reason, and die out.

1944 Ecology 25 248/2 Others [sc. species], termed by English rock-gardeners ‘miffy’, demand a highly specialized habitat in order to thrive.

1969 Dict. Gardening (Royal Hort. Soc.) Suppl. 489/1 A position should never be chosen for the rock garden simply because it is unsuitable for anything else... It is certainly one reason why alpine plants have won an unjustified reputation for being ‘miffy’ or difficult to grow.

1958 ‘A. Bridge’ Portuguese Escape 104 ‘All right, all right,’ Melplash said, rather miffily. ‘There's no rush.’

1845 R. Ford Hand-bk. Travellers in Spain I. i. 84 We must never compare the sensitiveness of the punctilious hidalgo with the vulgar miffyness of the newly-enriched upstart.