different between skittish vs curiosity

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?sk?t??/
• (T-flapping) IPA^(key): [?sk????]
• Hyphenation: skit?tish

Adjective

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,^[1]

     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,^[2]

     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,^[3]

     […] ’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,^[4]

     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.

Synonyms

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

Derived terms

• skittishly
• skittishness

Translations

See also

• startle

English

Etymology

From Middle English curiosite, variant of curiouste, from Anglo-Norman curiouseté, from Latin c?ri?sit?tem, from c?ri?sus. Surface analysis curious +? -ity; see -osity.

Pronunciation

• enPR: kyoo?r"??s'?t?, IPA^(key): /?kj??????s?ti/

Noun

curiosity (countable and uncountable, plural curiosities)

1. (uncountable) Inquisitiveness; the tendency to ask and learn about things by asking questions, investigating, or exploring. [from 17th c.]

   Synonym: inquisitiveness

   Antonym: ignorance

   • 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde

     It was the first time that the lawyer had been received in that part of his friend's quarters; and he eyed the dingy, windowless structure with curiosity, and gazed round with a distasteful sense of strangeness as he crossed the theatre
2. A unique or extraordinary object which arouses interest. [from 17th c.]

3. (obsolete) Careful, delicate construction; fine workmanship, delicacy of building. [16th-19th c.]
   • 1631, John Smith, Advertisements, in Kupperman 1988, p. 81:

     wee built a homely thing like a barne, set upon Cratchets, covered with rafts, sedge, and earth, so also was the walls; the best of our houses of the like curiosity, but the most part farre much worse workmanship […]

Derived terms

• curiosity killed the cat

Related terms

• curious

Translations

References