The term is a back-formation from the 14th-century word "peevish", meaning ornery or ill-tempered.
The wear and tear upon their nerves and their muscles, and the loss of sleep make them peevish and fretful.
My recollection of housing meetings, albeit in a rural district council, when once or twice we had to consider rent increases, is that councillors became rather sour, peevish and bad-tempered.
The speech had a sort of peevish ring which, on an issue of the transcendent importance of this one, seem to me to be extremely unfortunate.
I agree with some of the points he made, but in other parts of his speech it seemed to me that he was taking a somewhat narrow and peevish view.
And all of them are peevish, whingeing statements of the obvious, not one of which is bold enough to get to the heart of the matter.
But now, he seems to have been dropped from the side, and, naturally, having been left out of the first eleven, he has become a little peevish and restless.
He was peevish when he was interrupted, although most of us have to submit to interruption and try to do so without losing our equilibrium.
