resty

Variant of restiff.

• Rhymes: -ɛsti

resty (comparative more resty, superlative most resty)

1. (now regional) Restive, resistant to control. [from 16th c.]
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, V.8:

     In vaine the Pagan bannes, and sweares, and rayles, / And backe with both his hands unto him hayles / The resty raynes […]

   • 1782, Frances Burney, Cecilia, London: T. Payne & Son and T. Cadell, Volume 1, Book 1, Chapter 6, p. 83,

     I could not come a moment sooner; I hardly expected to get here at all, for my horse has been so confounded resty I could not tell how to get him along.

   • 1910, Arthur Quiller-Couch (as “Q”), “The Copernican Convoy” in Corporal Sam and Other Stories, London: Smith, Elder, p. 57,

     “Catch hold of the pack-beasts!” I shouted, as they shied back upon us, and two were caught and held fast—I know not by whom. The third, the resty one, springing backwards past me, almost on his haunches, jerked his halter wide of my clutch, and in a moment was galloping full flight down the slope.

2. (now regional) Disposed to rest; inactive, lazy. [from 16th c.]
   • c. 1609, William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Act III, Scene 6,

     […] Come; our stomachs

     Will make what’s homely savoury: weariness

     Can snore upon the flint, when resty sloth

     Finds the down pillow hard.

   • 1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford: Printed by Iohn Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, OCLC 216894069; The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd corrected and augmented edition, Oxford: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, 1624, OCLC 54573970, (please specify |partition=1, 2, or 3):

     , New York, 2001, p.218:

     […] all [beef] is rejected and unfit for such as lead a resty life, anyways inclined to melancholy, or dry of complexion […]

   • 1649, John Milton, Eikonoklastes, London, Chapter 24, p. 182,

     […] what are Chaplains? In State perhaps they may be listed among the upper Servingmen of som great houshold, and be admitted to som such place, as may stile them the Sewers, or the Yeomen-Ushers of Devotion, where the Maister is too restie, or too rich to say his own prayers, or to bless his own Table.

• Strey, Styer, Treys, Tyers, treys, tyers, tyres