a. [f. prec. + -ISH1.]
1. Resembling a vixen in disposition; cross, ill-tempered, snappish.
1819. Examiner, No. 614, 3 Oct., 636/1. They put on little pale-lipped airs of serenity like a vixenish woman.
1828. Miss Mitford, Village, Ser. III. 109. My friend Daphne, the vixenish pug.
1841. Lever, C. O’Malley, lxvii. Others are married and have vixenish wives.
1880. Miss Braddon, Just as I am, xlv. He could hardly endure existence in the house that held his vixenish sisters.
Comb. 1837. Dickens, Pickw., xlvi. Two small vixenish looking ladies.
2. Characteristic of, appropriate to, a vixen.
1838. Dickens, O. Twist, iv. A short, thin, squeezed-up woman, with a vixenish countenance.
1865. Dublin Univ. Mag., I. 261. She … rang the bell with vixenish violence.
1889. Sat. Rev., 23 Feb., 208/2. The trashy verbiage, the vixenish tattle,… to which they are treated.
Hence Vixenishness.
1820. Examiner, No. 651. 633/1. Madge is too apt to think that vixenishness and virtue go together.
1865. Mrs. Whitney, Gayworthys, I. 117. She would never sharpen or narrow to vixenishness.
