Crossword clues for crotchety
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Crotchety \Crotch"et*y\ (kr?ch"?t-?), a. Given to crotchets; subject to whims; as, a crotchety man.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1825, from crotchet "whim or fancy" + -y (2). But the sense evolution is obscure.
Wiktionary
a. cranky, disagreeable, or stubborn, especially if prone to odd whims or fancy. alt. cranky, disagreeable, or stubborn, especially if prone to odd whims or fancy.
WordNet
adj. having a difficult and contrary disposition; "a cantankerous and venomous-tongued old lady"- Dorothy Sayers [syn: cantankerous, ornery]
Usage examples of "crotchety".
Father Looney, the old priest who said these low-status masses, was notoriously crotchety and eccentric.
He had turned into it at once, walking against the moist breeze, since that might well come from the outer world and mark a route of escape, and he had continued with angry chitters and curses to play his impulsively assumed role of crotchety, half-mad rat-bravo or rogue-rat.
He had told the voters, 'We can do better,' and now his deeply-held and boldly-stated meliorism would be tested - a test devised by a crotchety genius and delivered by an idealistic tycoon, both of whom clearly viewed him with the skepticism due an unproven youth.
Constant picking of the scraps in their garden patches had made the Quilty men exceedingly scrappy, and constant stitching upon the patch-work quilts had made the Quilty ladies extremely cross and crotchety.
He made his rounds through the little community of Clapboard on a set schedule of weekly rotations, visiting everyone from the oh-so-lonely Widow Baudelaire on Cobblestone Way to crotchety old Gargamel Stinch at Town's End.
They stayed on the lighted main path, straying now and then across the floodlit lawns but always visible, a crotchety old man supposedly walking wherever his whims led him, to the annoyance of his companion.