Why “protervity” is a great word
PROTERVITY — [Noun] A quality of being wantonly wayward, defiantly perverse, and peevishly quarrelsome. From the Latin protervitās, from protervus ("violent, wanton"). First attested in English in the early 16th century (c. 1527). Unlike "petulance," which implies a childish irritability, or "wantonness," which suggests licentious extravagance, protervity is a deliberate, combative contrariness. It is the child who smashes his own toy to spite you, the scholar who argues a blatant falsehood just to prove he can, and the spiteful rip in a borrowed book's page—a small, sharp knife of spite wielded against the fabric of civil accord.