from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
adjective Ill-tempered and quarrelsome; disagreeable.
adjective Difficult to handle.
from The Century Dictionary.
Given to or marked by ill-tempered contradiction or opposition; contradictory; mulish; contentious; cross; waspish; ill-natured: as, “a cantankerous humour,”
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
adjective given to or marked by an ill-tempered nature, ill-tempered, cranky, surly, crabby.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
adjective stubbornly obstructive and unwilling to cooperate
adjective having a difficult and contrary disposition
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Perhaps from Middle English contek, dissension (influenced by such words as rancorous and cankerous), from Anglo-Norman contec, possibly from Latin contāctus, past participle of contingere, to touch; see contact.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Perhaps derived from earlier contenkerous, from contentious + rancorous.
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Examples
Celestino, an anarchist veteran of the Spanish Civil War, lives in cantankerous old age in Paris, complaining to his daughter about their host country, yet not daring to return home for fear of Francoist reprisal.
Celestino, an anarchist veteran of the Spanish Civil War, lives in cantankerous old age in Paris, complaining to his daughter about their host country, yet not daring to return home for fear of Francoist reprisal.
God forbid the Post reporter should "take sides," as that would violate the Golden Rule of "balance," and the "debate" might turn still more "cantankerous" -- or maybe it would get a bit more edifying, as real debate should be.
Barnard, best known as the cantankerous Dr. Hogue in 'Doc Hollywood,' co-starred with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in the 1998 sequel movie 'The Odd Couple II' and saw his son Doug Hughes win a Tony for directing the play 'Doubt.'
Rex learned much of what he knows about the profession from his father, and while his dad was proud to be called cantankerous and rightly hailed as a defensive genius,
brtom commented on the word cantankerous
That’s because you don’t know her as well as I. Ecod! I know every inch about her; and there’s not a more bitter cantankerous toad in all Christendom.
Goldsmith, She Stoops, II
January 10, 2007
dharma66 commented on the word cantankerous
my husband 'Bob' just happened to look over my shoulder and he thought I was looking up a word to describe him!!! LOL how apropos!
October 22, 2008