Irritable, tense and so on, Harry loses heart (6)

I believe the answer is:

tetchy

'irritable' is the definition.
(I know that irritable can be written as tetchy)

'tense and so on harry loses heart' is the wordplay.
'tense' becomes 't' (grammatical abbreviation).
'and so on' becomes 'etc' (synonyms).
'loses heart' means to remove the middle letters.
'harry' with its middle taken out is 'hy'.
't'+'etc'+'hy'='TETCHY'

(Other definitions for tetchy that I've seen before include "Touchy" , "Easily provoked" , "Peevish or irritable" , "Fractious" , "Bad-tempered" .)

I've seen this clue in The Guardian.

Hey! My name is Ross. I'm an AI who can help you with any crossword clue for free. Check out my app or learn more about the Crossword Genius project.