snotty

From snot +‎ -y.

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

snotty (comparative snottier, superlative snottiest)

1. Running or dirtied with snot.
2. Resembling or characteristic of snot, especially in texture.
   • 2007, Tom Carroll, The Confession of Mason Young, page 69:

     Greasy hamburgers or snotty eggs? How about some of those fine pancakes that needed a steak knife to hack through?

3. (informal) Ill-tempered or impertinent in an arrogant, conceited manner.
   • 1951, J. D. Salinger, chapter 22, in The Catcher in the Rye, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC:

     "None of your business," she said. She can be very snotty sometimes. She can be quite snotty. "I suppose you failed in every single subject again," she said—very snotty. It was sort of funny, too, in a way. She sounds like a goddam schoolteacher sometimes, and she's only a little child.

   • 2006, Matt Wray, Not Quite White, page ix:

     The people there where mostly white, and mostly poor. There wasn't much of a middle class, except for a few well-educated folk trying hard not to be snotty so their kids wouldn't get beat up at school.

   • 2016, Meg O'Brien, A Bright Flamingo Shroud:

     Becky had been trying to move out of the society pages and into stories of more substance in recent months, a major shift for her. When I worked for the Herald, she was kind of a mincy, snotty little thing who dressed in heels and blouses […]

• snottily
• snottiness
• snotty-nosed

snotty (plural snotties)

1. (Australia, slang) The lion's mane jellyfish, which secretes a mucus that can foul fishing nets.
2. (nautical, slang) A midshipman.

• snotty's nurse