cantankerous

comparative more cantankerous · superlative most cantankerous

1. Given to or marked by an ill-tempered, quarrelsome nature; ill-tempered, cranky, crabby.

   The normally cantankerous media did not complain.

   2026 February 13, Mark Sappenfield, “Ilia Malinin and the unforgiving glare of the Olympic spotlight”, in The Christian Science Monitor

   5 more examples

   "She is a cantankerous old maid," added another, whom I recognised, by his voice, as a man whose attentions I had put a determined check to not six weeks before: "she is a cantankerous old maid, fretting and snarling over the loss of her beauty."

   1839, “The youth of Julia Howard”, in Fraser's magazine for town and country, volume 20, page 618

   Murphy's Law never proved itself more accurate than at the Nov. 18 film benefit for Persephone Press. With problems ranging from a cantankerous projector to blown fuses, the presentations of Jan Oxenberg's films were blurred, disrupted and played with lapses in their soundtracks.

   1978 December 9, Pat M. Kuras, “A Splice of Lesbian Life”, in Gay Community News, volume 6, number 20, page 11

   By contrast, cantankerous and churlish people are contemptuously independent of others’ opinions, not caring enough about others and their views.

   1998, Pauline Chazan, The Moral Self, page 80

   Nina was thrilled, muttering her cantankerous joy that I was getting out of the house.

   2007, Linda Francis Lee, The Devil in the Junior League, page 44

   Unfortunately, as Great-Aunt Bert could be a bit cantankerous, they were having to be creative.

   2010, Clare Vanderpool, Moon Over Manifest, page 169

   Synonyms: cranky, crotchety, atrabilious, bad-tempered, bilious, bitchy, brainish, carnaptious