What is "cantankerous"

Usage examples of "cantankerous".

He was the local schoolmaster in the nearest township downcountry and was of a superior and, it would emerge, cantankerous disposition.

I was retained at Hertford Assizes, with Peter Ryland as my leader, to prosecute a man for perjury, which was alleged to have been committed in an action in which a cantankerous man, who had once filled the office of High Sheriff for the county, was the prosecutor.

HOUR LATER Ryan was tall in the saddle of a cantankerous skewbald, heading along a narrow trail with J.

Or getting some ghastly place where you would be at the beck and call of spoiled brats and cantankerous old dowagers?

Bork calls her opinionated, obstinate and cantankerous, but this is not quite the same thing.

I'm part of her story, however bumbling and cantankerous I must be in her mind.

I'm supposed to be the cantankerous blackguard who makes the boss look good.

But imagine two such beautiful young women as my own dear lady and Margaret Ceely, and a Christmas Eve Cinderella in the beautiful ball-room at Clevere Hall, and you will understand that even Major Ceely's well-known cantankerous temper could not altogether spoil the merriment of a good, old-fashioned, festive gathering.

She was just as cantankerous as she'd been when she was drudging in the dark, cramped, dilapidated farmhouse in Alamance County.

Whenever the auditorium's cantankerous lighting system acts up, they've always blamed the suicide.

He was a Down Easter in French disguise -- cantankerous, suspicious, close-mouthed, using his accent as a shield more than as a help in communication.

The author of the Cantos was too opinionated, too active, too visible to the public at large, too obscene, and generally just too damned cantankerous to be a cool observer representing alien races so powerful that they could destroy us in an eye blink.

Although many things about the cantankerous desert rat puzzle the boy, the explosive exit from the SUV, punctuated by a storm of foul language, and the flight on foot across the fluorescent plain are the most baffling.

It wasn't until he heard himself informing Ellen Cherry of his departure that he realized that he had already decided to escape the pressures of his estranged wife, his dealer, and his sudden fame, and jet off with a cargo of toilet paper rolls and a cantankerous pet crow to that puzzling city that has been variously described as the Eye, the Navel, the Song, and the Hemorrhage of the world.

Bitterly he began to write, thinking as he did so that if ever all the cantankerous streaks in people h'ke Amarante Cordova, Joe Mondragon, and Onofre Martinez were united behind a common cause, there would be much more than all hell to pay.