The subhead of this site used to read "'Lanky and Peckish' is probably closer to the truth." Then I had this from a teammate, which made me laugh:
My two cents, by the way, is that neither of those words is really all that good, but I respect the thesaurus work and the self-effacement behind them. The idea that *you* are "lanky," is, really, a serious insult to people like XXX and me, who are pretty much left with only "scrawny" if you have staked out that territory. Peckish implies, to me anyway, a shortness of temper and brittleness that just aren't even remotely there.
How I got the British usage of "peckish" ("slightly hungry") in my head rather than the American ("ill-tempered") is a bit of a mystery. My theory was too much Tolkien as a youth, but now I'm guessing it's too much Wallace and Gromit as an adult.
So I changed it.
