Adjective : a pettish refusal.    From Dictionary.com. 

I tried to reason myself out of my pettishness, to atone to John, poor fellow!.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Bacillus of Beauty A Romance of To-day] Reference

"We might have the wedding in the new barn," said Nanny, with gentle pettishness.    From Wordnik.com.  [Short Stories for English Courses] Reference

With the unreasonable pettishness of a wife ever indulged, she reproached her husband.    From Wordnik.com.  [Notable Women of Olden Time] Reference

Loveday picked up the book again and read the next few pages with increasing pettishness.    From Wordnik.com.  [Cruise To A Wedding]

"Yes, that he does!" said the young girl, frankly; "and I beg his pardon for my pettishness.".    From Wordnik.com.  [The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 21, July, 1859] Reference

Her shyness, exclusiveness, pettishness, and ignorance are delicious in the rosy girl of sixteen.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 Devoted To Literature And National Policy] Reference

Her elegant sprightliness was certainly deserting her, giving place to a kind of fixed pettishness.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Way Home] Reference

The attendants looked round and smiled; -- Lawrence frowned and turned away, with a boy's pettishness.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 23, September, 1859] Reference

"My train is caught," she said in a tone of sudden pettishness; she stooped to lift it with her hand that was free.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Fortieth Door] Reference

Both Ms. Watson and Ms. Boynton infuse their characters with more theatricality and pettishness than seems absolutely necessary.    From Wordnik.com.  [Terrorist or Not?] Reference

And he suspected that her nature tended toward shrewishness, which he, as a soldier who despised any pettishness, personally disliked.    From Wordnik.com.  [In Gordath Wood: Writer Patrice Sarath » Lady Blackheart] Reference

Hence her flight from her own family, if it ever came, would be laid more to the door of a temperamental pettishness than anything else.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Financier] Reference

I know not; but so it was, that he stamped on the floor with pettishness, and then checking himself, burst into a violent flood of tears.    From Wordnik.com.  [Westward Ho!] Reference

Her argument with Guy now seemed only pettishness.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Path of the King] Reference

There are marks of pettishness, but not of passion.    From Wordnik.com.  [Gala-days] Reference

Mrs. Leyburn, almost with an accent of pettishness.    From Wordnik.com.  [Robert Elsmere] Reference

For me, her pettishness is one of her charms, I confess it.    From Wordnik.com.  [Complete Project Gutenberg Works of George Meredith] Reference

He had no time to worry about the pettishness of his tools.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Black] Reference

She replied in the affirmative, but with some little pettishness.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Life Everlasting; a reality of romance] Reference

"But you don't answer me," she pouted with an affectation of pettishness.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Lost Guidon 1911] Reference

She turned her back on him, then suddenly smarted at her own pettishness.    From Wordnik.com.  [Joanna Godden] Reference

"And he's abominably rude," she went on, with a sudden return of pettishness.    From Wordnik.com.  [Tristram of Blent An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House] Reference

This, together with her very human pettishness, complicated the social problem.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Best Short Stories of 1919 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story] Reference

This pettishness amused me so much that I pretended to be a little sore myself.    From Wordnik.com.  [The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories] Reference

He ignored Hyacinth's resentment, endured her pettishness, and was studiously polite to her.    From Wordnik.com.  [London Pride Or When the World Was Younger] Reference

He had seen her in moods that varied from feminine pettishness to the teasingly mischievous.    From Wordnik.com.  [Burned Bridges] Reference

The compulsion was exasperating, and the great man scrawled with all the pettishness of a child.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Story of the Foss River Ranch] Reference

"I only want to see Matty provided for, papa," I answered, a little ashamed of my former pettishness.    From Wordnik.com.  [Uncle Rutherford's Nieces A Story for Girls] Reference

"He hasn't time to call on anybody," Flossy said, with a mixture of pride, and a sort of comic pettishness.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Chautauqua Girls At Home] Reference

There was a good deal of the pettishness of nervousness among us at that time, and I had my full share of it.    From Wordnik.com.  [Aladdin & Co. A Romance of Yankee Magic] Reference

Katy took no notice of the tone; and before long Lilly recovered from her pettishness, and began to talk about the school.    From Wordnik.com.  [What Katy Did at School] Reference

"I want ter know how ye knew I was making diamonds," he asked, with a certain bashful pettishness not unlike his daughter's.    From Wordnik.com.  [Flip, a California romance] Reference

Captain Jekyl threw away the remnant of his cigar, with a little movement of pettishness, and began to whistle an opera air.    From Wordnik.com.  [St. Ronan's Well] Reference

"I'm getting sick of hearing about him from you," cried Hull with the pettishness of the spoiled children of the upper class.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Conflict] Reference

Be the object perverse enough, it asserted itself, in his facile character, with the pettishness to be found in a spoilt child.    From Wordnik.com.  [Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon — Volume 02] Reference

In the pettishness of my disappointment, I decided that it was in vain to attempt to improve and civilize such people as the Irish.    From Wordnik.com.  [Tales and Novels — Volume 04] Reference

I can see none of the fabled sublimity in a storm; only the pettishness of a spoiled child, or of an angry man bent on breaking things.    From Wordnik.com.  [A Pessimist In Theory and Practice] Reference