cantankerous
/kænˈtæŋkəɹəs/
cantankerous adjective: given to or marked by an ill-tempered, quarrelsome nature; ill-tempered, cranky, crabby.
Adjective
cantankerous (comparative more cantankerous, superlative most cantankerous)
- Given to or marked by an ill-tempered, quarrelsome nature; ill-tempered, cranky, crabby.
- "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
- Synonyms:
- cranky, crotchety, atrabilious, bad-tempered, bilious, bitchy, brainish, carnaptious, choleric, crabbit
cantankerous meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada
cantankerous in Urdu
- بداخلاق, بدمزاج
cantankerous in Bengali
- কলহপ্রিয়, বদমেজাজি, ঝগড়াটে, খিটখিটে
cantankerous in Malayalam
- irritable, bad-tempered, irascible
- മുരട്ടുസ്വഭാവമുള്ള, ദുഃസ്വഭാവമുള്ള, മൂർഖത്വമുള്ള, സേർഷ്യ, ഈർഷ്യയോടുകൂടിയ, കലഹസ്വഭാവമുള്ള
cantankerous in Kannada
- ಜಗಳಗಂಟ, ಜಗಳಗಂಟಿಯಾದ, ಕಲಹ ಪ್ರಿಯ, ಕಿತ್ತಾಟದ, ವಿಷಮ ಸ್ವಭಾವದ, ದುಷ್ಟ ಸ್ವಭಾವದ
More languagesFewer languages
- cantankerous in Punjabi
- ਕੱਬਾ kabbā
- cantankerous in Gujarati
- વાંકું vā̃kũ
Examples of cantankerous in a sentence
- 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:
- 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:
Synonyms of cantankerous
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of cantankerous
| comparative | more cantankerous |
|---|---|
| superlative | most cantankerous |
Origin of cantankerous
Perhaps derived from earlier contenkerous, from contentious + rancorous.
Words formed from cantankerous
Questions about cantankerous
- What does cantankerous mean?
- Cantankerous means given to or marked by an ill-tempered, quarrelsome nature; ill-tempered, cranky, crabby.
- What is cantankerous in Urdu?
- Cantankerous in Urdu is بداخلاق, بدمزاج. See Cantankerous meaning in Urdu.
- How do you use cantankerous in a sentence?
- By contrast, cantankerous and churlish people are contemptuously independent of others’ opinions, not caring enough about others and their views.
- What part of speech is cantankerous?
- Cantankerous is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce cantankerous?
- Cantankerous is pronounced /kænˈtæŋkəɹəs/.
Words near cantankerous in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cantankerous (page history and authors); cantankerous (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); cantankerous (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); cantankerous (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); cantankerous (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ਕੱਬਾ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); વાંકું (Gujarati) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-cantankerous.ogg, en-au-cantankerous.ogg.
Cite this entry: “cantankerous.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cantankerous. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.