Origin and history of bratty

c. 1400, "a cloak of coarse cloth" (Chaucer); probably the same word as Old English bratt "cloak," which is from a Celtic source (compare Old Irish bratt "cloak, cloth").

As a term for a child, William Dunbar's Flyting (c. 1500) is usually cited as first use; but Dictionaries of the Scots Language questions whether Dunbar's use means "child" or "garment." The child sense is clearly attested by 1530s. The transferred meaning is perhaps from the notion of "child's apron," but also compare bastard, "child conceived on a saddle instead of a bed." OED notes that "evidence of the transition of sense has not been found." In earliest uses the implication is of an unwanted or unplanned child rather than a reference to behavior; differing from a bastard in that a married couple might have a brat. From the association of brats belonging to low-class people evolved the sense "uncouth, ill-mannered child" by 1808. Used of adults thought to have childishly selfish or rude manners by 1968.

Hollywood Brat Pack (modeled on 1950s Rat Pack) is from 1985. Brattery "nursery" is attested from 1788. The Bratz line of children's dolls debuted in 2001, said to have been named in reference to the Brat Pack since the original dolls were sold together in a set.

very common adjective suffix, "full of, covered with, or characterized by" the thing expressed by the noun, Middle English -i, from Old English -ig, from Proto-Germanic *-iga-, from PIE -(i)ko-, adjectival suffix, cognate with elements in Greek -ikos, Latin -icus (see -ic). Germanic cognates include Dutch, Danish, German -ig, Gothic -egs.

It was used from 13c. with verbs (drowsy, clingy), and by 15c. with other adjectives (crispy). Chiefly with monosyllables; with more than two the effect tends to become comedic.

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Variant forms in -y for short, common adjectives (vasty, hugy) helped poets after the loss of grammatically empty but metrically useful -e in late Middle English. Verse-writers adapted to -y forms, often artfully, as in Sackville's "The wide waste places, and the hugy plain." (and the huge plain would have been a metrical balk).

After Coleridge's criticism of it as archaic artifice, poets gave up stilly (Moore probably was last to make it work, with "Oft in the Stilly Night"), paly (which Keats and Coleridge himself had used) and the rest.

Jespersen ("Modern English Grammar," 1954) also lists bleaky (Dryden), bluey, greeny, and other color words, lanky, plumpy, stouty, and the slang rummy. Vasty survives, he writes, only in imitation of Shakespeare; cooly and moisty (Chaucer, hence Spenser) he regards as fully obsolete. But in a few cases he notes (haughty, dusky) they seem to have supplanted shorter forms.