Saturday 25 July 2015

single word requests - Is there an adjective to describe someone who feels the desire to run away from situations?

When a horse is in a mood where he's prone to jump or bolt at the slightest disturbance, we describe him as:



  • skittish

  • jumpy

  • spooked¹

When a person so acts, we more typically describe him as:



  • anxious

  • nervous

Or, in more literary or quasi-psychological contexts:



  • high-strung

Much less commonly, you have the rare and somewhat counterintuitive (based on modern meanings of related words):



  • excitable

  • restive

Personally, I'd go with skittish.




¹ I know it would make more sense to describe him as spookable, but usage prefers to describe it in the past tense, as a state of mind the horse is in after being spooked for the first time.

If this bugs you, you could find a middle ground in easily spooked.

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