Annoyed and resentful in a fretful, petty way over some small grievance..
Annoyed and resentful in a fretful, petty way over some small grievance.
Peeved sits at the low, colloquial end of the anger family — lighter than vexation or exasperation and with none of the moral weight of indignation or umbrage. Merriam-Webster's synonym note pins its flavor precisely: it "suggests arousing fretful often petty or querulous irritation" (their example: a toddler peeved at being refused a cookie), which gives it a faintly childish, querulous coloring close to miffed but a touch more sulky and resentful. It is mild annoyance, usually over a specific provocation, voiced more in grumbling than in heat — the noun peeve and the everyday "pet peeve" come from the same root. Register is informal and faintly comic; you can be peeved without anyone taking you very seriously.
Adjective from the verb peeve "to irritate, exasperate," a 20th-century back-formation from peevish, with "peeved" being the earliest attested form: Etymonline dates "peeve" to 1907 (implied in "peeved"); Merriam-Webster dates the verb to 1901. "Peevish" itself is late 14c. peyvesshe "perverse, capricious, silly," of uncertain origin, perhaps modeled on Latin perversus "reversed, perverse."
Since coinage in the early 1900s the adjective has been stable, denoting petty, fretful annoyance; the parent adjective "peevish" shifted earlier, its original "perverse, capricious" sense becoming obsolete by the 17c. as the "fretful, ill-tempered" sense (from the 1520s) took over.