Regarding the recent Senate committee hearings on the September
2012 attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya,
several major media outlets described Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton as, among other things, “feisty.” Strictly from a
definitional standpoint, the media’s characterization appears
unobjectionable. Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary,
for example, most relevantly defines “feisty” as “quarrelsome,
aggressive, belligerent, etc.” and these words arguably capture
at least some aspects of Secretary Clinton’s remarks. A modest
examination of American English usage suggests that “feisty” is
commonly used to refer to the behavior or character of people in
a group (e.g., “the candidates had a feisty debate” or “it sure
is a feisty crowd”) or to an animal, particularly a small
rambunctious animal (e.g., “that there is one feisty critter”).
Indeed, the word’s proximate origins concern the temperamental
nature of mixed-breed dogs, and its earliest origins concern the
malodorous passing