Crossword clues for fretful
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Fretful \Fret"ful\, a. [See 2d Fret.] Disposed to fret; ill-humored; peevish; angry; in a state of vexation; as, a fretful temper. -- Fret"ful*ly, adv. -- Fret"ful*ness, n.
Syn: Peevish; ill-humored; ill-natured; irritable; waspish; captious; petulant; splenetic; spleeny; passionate; angry.
Usage: Fretful, Peevish, Cross. These words all indicate an unamiable working and expression of temper. Peevish marks more especially the inward spirit: a peevish man is always ready to find fault. Fretful points rather to the outward act, and marks a complaining impatience: sickly children are apt to be fretful. Crossness is peevishness mingled with vexation or anger.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1590s, "gnawing; disposed to fret," from fret (n.) (see fret (v.)) + -ful. Related: Fretfully; fretfulness.
Wiktionary
a. 1 irritable, bad-tempered, grumpy or peevish 2 unable to relax; fidgety or restless
WordNet
Usage examples of "fretful".
Folks of all manner had frequently characterized him as priggish, fretful, and faultfinding, but his newfound insights into the nature of existence appeared to have boosted those personality traits, as well.
Fretful, Jansenist, and convinced of the duty of Christian charity, his life in society was a perpetual struggle.
Anna looked harassed and Claudia and Shua looked exhausted, and Miriam was fretful, trying to find more that she could do to ease the burdens of those left healthy enough to work.
She glanced out the windows at the swirling white landscape, fretful as a silverback cat trapped in a den not her own.
She kept giving Sterns fretful glances until he reached over and patted her hand.
OR THE SPRIG OF EGLANTINE GIVEN TO A MAID From this bleeding hand of mine, Take this sprig of Eglantine: Which, though sweet unto your smell, Yet the fretful briar will tell, He who plucks the sweets, shall prove Many thorns to be in love.
Pearl had learned to pick up recordings by their edges only, to wipe them with a chamois, and to place them on the spindle of the costly, fretful machine.
Grannach padding fleet, the two Matawaye uneasy followers after their rescuer hosts, the horses trotting clattery loud behind, fretful at their strange surroundings.
But with her son, the old lady had better success: he would listen to all she had to say, provided she could soothe his fretful temper, and refrain from irritating him by her own asperities.
The gleaming blondness of his strange, imminent being put the father into a fever of fretful irritation.
A fretful suspicion that had been burrowing around in her subconscious all day finally surfaced and looked her in the eye, and this time she returned the stare: Ben Caxton would not have left town without letting her know the outcome of his attempt to see the Man from Mars.
Runkle, the mere sight of whom, circs being what they were, was enough to freeze the blood and make each particular hair stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine, as I have heard Jeeves put it.
Nevertheless he had a fretful desire to escape from the discomposing society of a lord.
I watched the doctor rummaging in the glimmer of his bag, bottles clinking, his steel glasses and bald head shining with the glow of his useless potions, his meaningless spells, before he applied the drainings and poultices that always left my mother filler and more fretful.
Thy knotted and combined locks to part, / And each particular hair to stand on end, / Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:.