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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
churlish
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Is it not churlish that Labour Members have not welcomed any of those orders?
▪ It felt churlish to tell him that I was in a hurry, that the coffee would have to be quick.
▪ It would be churlish to complain about these gorgeous films.
▪ It would be churlish to refuse you.
▪ Recollecting his churlish behaviour, Isabel wondered how she could be attracted to such a man even for a moment.
▪ She was offering them cups of tea and it was churlish to refuse.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Churlish

Churlish \Churl"ish\, a.

  1. Like a churl; rude; cross-grained; ungracious; surly; illiberal; niggardly. ``Churlish benefits.''
    --Ld. Burleigh.

    Half mankind maintain a churlish strife.
    --Cowper.

  2. Wanting pliancy; unmanageable; unyielding; not easily wrought; as, a churlish soil; the churlish and intractable nature of some minerals.
    --Boyle.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
churlish

late Old English cierlisc "of or pertaining to churls," from churl + -ish. Meaning "deliberately rude" is late 14c. Related: Churlishly; churlishness.

Wiktionary
churlish

a. 1 of or pertaining to a serf, peasant, or rustic 2 rude, surly, ungracious 3 stingy or grudging 4 (context of soil English) difficult to till, lacking pliancy; unmanageable

WordNet
churlish
  1. adj. rude and boorish

  2. having a bad disposition; surly; "churlish as a bear"- Shakespeare

Usage examples of "churlish".

But it would be churlish to deny that he had been kindness itself after the distressing theft of the Breguet watch at Temple Meads Station.

And, by your leave, I shall him quite anon. Right in his churlish termes will I speak, I pray to God his necke might to-break.

He obtained ten bushels of corn of the churlish and treacherous natives, who closely watched and dogged the expedition.

It seemed churlish and hypertechnical to object that there was no such right in the Constitution.

None of mistresses would ever dream of conceiving a child with one of these churlish cretins.

It would be churlish to tell Brutus and Cassius about their provinces for the first time in the full glare of the Senate.

God me speed, I say, a churl hath done a churlish deed, What should I say?

Some might think it churlish for a trooper to belittle a posting to so beautiful a world, and indeed, Pyrassis boasted an amenable climate and pleasant surroundings.

He would continue as he had for the past several years, supplanting the churlish emperor one step at a time, bit by bit, until there would be no more need for Aboshan, his exiled wife, or any of her prying, spying, low-level functionaries.

Whatever it was that overpowered Briony, it wasn't your churlish attire.

Gives o'er and leaves his part-created cost A naked subject to the weeping clouds, And waste for churlish winter's tyranny.

From time to time puffs of smoke still gushed into the room, but Lord Charlbury, pressed into a deep chair, and given a cushion for the support of his injured arm, felt that it would have been churlish to have animadverted upon this circumstance.

Still, I might help you have the best of both worlds were you to moderate your churlish behavior.

The result cannot but be a race of churlish, cacophonous hybrids, whose amorphous outcries will waver uncertainly betwixt prose and verse, absorbing the vices of both and the virtues of neither.

All the veriest stuff of Life whose churlish churnings and infinite interweavings, confusing comings and linear leanings constitute the essence of the universe's febrile fecund fabric.