irascible

comparative more irascible · superlative most irascible

1. Easily provoked to outbursts of anger; irritable.

   I am naturally irascible, and if I could have shaken this negative gentleman vigorously, the relief would have been immense.

   1863 May 22 – 1863 June 26, L[ouisa] M[ay] Alcott, “Obtaining Supplies”, in Hospital Sketches, Boston, Mass.: James Redpath, […], published August 1863, →OCLC, page 15

   2 more examples

   Like some poor devils ashore that happen to know an irascible great man, they make distant unobtrusive salutations to him in the street, lest if they pursued the acquaintance further, they might receive a summary thump for their presumption.

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “The Affidavit”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 26

   […] a never idle man of great physical strength and extremely irascible—did he not fling a badly baked plum pudding through the window upon Christmas Day?

   1922, W[illiam] B[utler] Yeats, chapter XII, in The Trembling of the Veil, London: Privately printed for subscribers only by T[homas] Werner Laurie, Ltd., →OCLC, book I (Four Years 1887–1891), page 31

   Synonyms: cantankerous, choleric, cranky, bad-tempered, ill-tempered, hot-tempered, atrabilious, bad-tempered

2. Manifesting anger.

   Alan Greenspan was on an irascible roll last week, first dissing everyone who holds a fixed-rate mortgage — suckers! — and later picking on folks who collect Social Security: Get back to work, Grandma.

   2004 February 29, Daniel Kadlec, “Why He’s Meanspan”, in Time, New York, N.Y.: Time Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 30 Jun 2013

   1 more example

   The divine Plato, whose doctrines are not sufficiently attended to by philosophers of the present age, allows to every man three souls—one, immortal and rational, seated in the brain, that it may overlook and regulate the body—a second consisting of the surly and irascible passions, which like belligerent powers lie encamped around the heart[…]

   1809, Diedrich Knickerbocker [pseudonym; Washington Irving], chapter II, in A History of New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty. […], volume I, New York, N.Y.: Inskeep & Bradford, […], →OCLC, book III, page 132

3. lifestyleRelating to irascible passions.

   The irascible and concupiscible appetites are distinguished by different aspects of their objects. The object of the concupiscible faculty "is sensible good or evil, simply apprehended as such" while good and evil considered as "arduous or difficult … is the object of the irascible faculty."

   2015, Jeffrey Froula, “Aquinas on the Moral Neutrality of the Passion of Despair”, in New Blackfriars