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.
No comments:
Post a Comment