crabbedness - Glite Dictionary

Examples

She showed her crabbedness when she snapped at her colleagues over minor issues.
The crabbedness of the manager left the team feeling demotivated and anxious.
No, though he felt a kinship with Kreymborg's "determination for freedom brought into relief by a crabbedness of temper that makes him peculiarly able to value what is being done here."

Academic text (2007)

Synonyms

irritability

vscrabbedness

8 4.2

Being easily annoyed or quick to become angry

adds a stronger focus on being hard to please as well as annoyed

petulance

vscrabbedness

5 9.0

Being easily annoyed and acting childish

is less childish and more generally ill tempered and hard to please

crankiness

vscrabbedness

3 6.0

Being easily annoyed and acting in odd, fussy ways

is mainly plain ill temper and difficulty pleasing rather than eccentricity

grumpiness

vscrabbedness

3 4.1

A feeling of being easily annoyed

is broader, focusing on being hard to please not only surliness

peevishness

vscrabbedness

1 7.3

A tendency to become easily annoyed and impatient

adds greater emphasis on being hard to please rather than mere impatience

crabbiness

vscrabbedness

1 5.5

A mood of being easily annoyed and bad-tempered

is the older or alternate written form for the same quality

crossness

vscrabbedness

1 8.1

Being slightly angry or annoyed

implies a lasting unwillingness to be pleased beyond a temporary mood

grouchiness

vscrabbedness

1 4.0

A state of being easily annoyed and in a bad mood

is more than a mood, adding a general tendency to be hard to please

fussiness

vscrabbedness

1 5.7

A state of being easily upset or hard to please

is more generally ill tempered rather than only picky about details

orneriness

vscrabbedness

Informal

1 9.9

Being easily annoyed, stubborn, and hard to get along with

is less about stubborn meanness and more about being irritable and hard to please

pettishness

vscrabbedness

9.0

Being easily annoyed and angry about small things in a childish way

is broader, covering general ill temper and difficulty pleasing others

cantankerousness

vscrabbedness

9.2

A habit of being bad-tempered and hard to get along with

is less about arguing and more about simple irritability and being hard to please

Antonyms

friendliness

16 1.0

A kind and pleasant way of treating other people

agreeableness

1 5.3

Being friendly, kind, and easy to get along with

How Irritable

cantankerousness

9.2

bad temper

14 3.4

crabbedness

9.9

irritability

8 4.2

calmness

9 2.7

Surface Forms

crabbedness singular

crabbednesses plural

Morphology

crabbedness = crabbed (transparent) = crab + ed + ness

Formed from the adjective 'crabbed' plus the productive nominalizing suffix '-ness', so the meaning 'state of being ill-tempered' follows regular derivational rules.

Etymology

Crabbedness comes from the old image of a crab and the crab-apple, both thought of as 'sour' or 'grumpy'. That picture helps you remember that crabbedness means being 'ill-tempered' and hard to please.