skittish

Probably from skite (“to move lightly and hurriedly; to move suddenly, particularly in an oblique direction (Scotland, Northern England)”) +‎ -ish; compare skitter.

• IPA^(key): /ˈskɪtɪʃ/
• (T-flapping) IPA^(key): [ˈskɪɾɪʃ]
• Hyphenation: skit‧tish

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skittish (comparative more skittish, superlative most skittish)

1. Easily scared or startled; timid.

   The cat likes people he knows, but he is skittish around strangers.

   • 1557, Roger Edgeworth, Sermons Very Fruitfull, Godly, and Learned, London: Robert Caly, The fiftenth treatice or Sermon,

     All such be like a skittish starting horse, whiche coming ouer a bridge, wil start for a shadowe, or for a stone lying by him, and leapeth ouer on the other side into the water, & drowneth both horse and man.

2. Wanton; changeable; fickle
   • c. 1601, William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act III, Scene 3,

     How some men creep in skittish fortune’s hall,

     Whiles others play the idiots in her eyes!

   • 1785, William Cowper, The Task, London: J. Johnson, Book 2, p. 69,

     […] ’Tis pitiful

     To court a grin, when you should wooe a soul;

     To break a jest, when pity would inspire

     Pathetic exhortation; and t’ address

     The skittish fancy with facetious tales,

     When sent with God’s commission to the heart.

3. Difficult to manage; tricky.
   • 1872, George Eliot, Middlemarch, Book 2, Chapter 15,

     For everybody’s family doctor was remarkably clever, and was understood to have immeasurable skill in the management and training of the most skittish or vicious diseases.

• (easily scared or startled): spookish, jumpy, skittery, skitterish, squirrelly

• skittishly
• skittishness

• startle