Feisty

[fahy-stee] /ˈfaɪ sti/

adjective, feistier, feistiest.
1.
full of animation, energy, or courage; spirited; spunky; plucky:
The champion is faced with a feisty challenger.
2.
ill-tempered; pugnacious.
3.
troublesome; difficult:
feisty legal problems.
/ˈfaɪstɪ/
adjective (informal) feistier, feistiest
1.
lively, resilient, and self-reliant
2.
(US & Canadian) frisky
3.
(US & Canadian) irritable
adj.

1896, “aggressive, exuberant, touchy,” American English, with -y (2) + feist “small dog,” earlier fice, fist (American English, 1805); short for fysting curre “stinking cur,” attested from 1520s, from Middle English fysten, fisten “break wind” (mid-15c.); related to Old English fisting “stink,” from Proto-Germanic *fistiz- “a fart,” said to be from PIE *pezd- (see fart), but there are difficulties.

The 1811 slang dictionary defines fice as “a small windy escape backwards, more obvious to the nose than ears; frequently by old ladies charged on their lap-dogs.” Cf. also Danish fise “to blow, to fart,” and obsolete English aske-fise, “fire-tender,” literally “ash-blower” (early 15c.), from an unrecorded Norse source, used in Middle English for a kind of bellows, but originally “a term of reproach among northern nations for an unwarlike fellow who stayed at home in the chimney corner” [OED].

adjective

Truculent; irascible: They said the president was a feisty little chap/ He was having trouble with a feisty old lady who didn’t want to move

[1896+; fr feist, found by 1770, ”small, worthless cur, esp a lapdog”]