Thing To Be Today: miffed.

 In a world where people are totally devastated by small things - a missed penalty at football, or the use of a non-fashionable word - I rather long for the Olden Days, when we just tended to be miffed.

Those were the days when a disappointment engendered a snort, an expletive, a small tantrum,  a frown, or an angry word. And then people just...got over it.

I realise this makes me a heartless brute. 

Except...I don't know...it's possible that people might be happier if their usual reaction is to be miffed (that is, transiently annoyed) than if they are totally devastated.

It might be worth trying, anyway, the next time something doesn't go quite your way.  

Thing To Be Today: miffed. This word appeared in the 1600s says my Collins dictionary (though other sources put its origin in the early 1800s). It's not certain where the word came from, but it might be close in sound to a snort.