Very irritable:
— Witty and waspish about his colleagues.

synonyms: bristly, prickly, splenetic.

Roget 901: irascible; bad-tempered, ill-tempered; irritable, susceptible; excitable etc. 825; thin-skinned etc. (sensitive) 822; fretful, fidgety; on the fret.    hasty, overhasty, quick, warm, hot, testy, touchy, techy^†, tetchy; like touchwood, like tinder; huffy, pettish, petulant; waspish, snappish, peppery, fiery, passionate, choleric, shrewish, sudden and quick in quarrel" [As You Like It]. querulous, captious, moodish^†; quarrelsome, contentious, disputatious; pugnacious etc. (bellicose) 720; cantankerous, exceptious^†; restiff etc. (perverse) 901.1^†; churlish etc. (discourteous) 895.    cross, cross as crabs, cross as two sticks, cross as a cat, cross as a dog, cross as the tongs; fractious, peevish, acari=atre^†.    in a bad temper; sulky etc. 901.1; angry etc. 900.    resentful, resentive^†; vindictive etc. 919.    ... show more

Roget 173: violent, vehement; warm; acute, sharp; rough, rude, ungentle, bluff, boisterous, wild; brusque, abrupt, waspish; impetuous; rampant.    turbulent; disorderly; blustering, raging etc. v.; troublous^†, riotous; tumultuary^†, tumultuous; obstreperous, uproarious; extravagant; unmitigated; ravening, inextinguishable, tameless; frenzied etc. (insane) 503.    desperate etc. (rash) 863; infuriate, furious, outrageous, frantic, hysteric, in hysterics.    fiery, flaming, scorching, hot, red-hot, ebullient.    savage, fierce, ferocious, fierce as a tiger.    excited etc. v.; unquelled^†, unquenched, unextinguished^†, unrepressed, unbridled, unruly; headstrong, ungovernable, unappeasable, immitigable, unmitigable^†; uncontrollable, incontrollable^†; insuppressible, irrepressible; orgastic, orgasmatic, orgasmic.    spasmodic, convulsive, explosive; detonating etc. v.; volcanic, meteoric; stormy etc. (wind) 349.    ... show more