prickly personality
- noun
- Informal
:
personalidad difícil
- At the meeting, I learned to be cautious around her prickly personality to avoid conflict.
Examples
-
His prickly personality often led to misunderstandings with his colleagues.
-
"Careful, Tar, there may be some prickly personalities engaged in this crazy talk."
Blog text (12) -
In spite of his somewhat prickly personality, Money had a remarkable number of collaborators in his publications, many of them his students.
Academic text (2003) -
Mr. Lampert's prickly personality makes it hard for him to maintain friendships.
Synonyms
3
6.0
Being easily annoyed and acting in odd, fussy ways
1
6.6
A rough, unfriendly way of speaking or acting
1
5.5
A mood of being easily annoyed and bad-tempered
1
9.6
A person who gets easily annoyed or angry over small things
1
9.9
Being easily annoyed, stubborn, and hard to get along with
A habit of being bad-tempered and hard to get along with
A quality of being unpleasant and hard to get along with that makes people avoid you
An unpleasant person who is hard to get along with
Antonyms
How Irritable
Surface Forms
Morphology
The adjective 'prickly' meaning 'inclined to be touchy or offended' combined with 'personality' (a person's characteristic disposition) yields a directly compositional meaning: a disposition that is easily irritated. This figurative but transparent metaphor (prickly → easily offended) is common cross-linguistically and should be clear to a B1 learner who knows both constituents.
Etymology
Prickly personality comes from the image of a plant covered in sharp points: the word prickly makes you think of something that pokes, so a personality like that seems to 'poke' others with quick anger or cold words. That's why it means 'easily irritated' or 'difficult to get along with'.