crabbed
- Adjective:
- Annoyed and irritable: Describes a person who is easily annoyed, bad-tempered, or expresses discontent in a sharp, unfriendly way.
- Difficult to read or understand: Describes handwriting that is cramped, irregular, and hard to decipher, or by extension, a style of writing or thought that is unnecessarily complex or obscure.
Describing a person's mood: The crabbed old man shouted at the children to get off his lawn.After waiting for hours, her responses became short and crabbed.
Describing handwriting or style: The historical document was written in a crabbed script that took experts weeks to decode.He dismissed the philosopher's crabbed prose as intentionally opaque.
"in a crabbed hand/style": written in a cramped, difficult-to-read manner. The note was scribbled in a crabbed hand, almost illegible.
"crabbed with age/pain": made irritable or physically contorted due to age or discomfort. His once generous spirit grew crabbed with age and isolation.
Crab (verb): To complain in a peevish or irritable way. He would crab about the weather every morning.
Crabbedly (adverb): In a crabbed manner. He answered crabbedly, refusing to elaborate.
Crabbedness (noun): The quality of being crabbed. The crabbedness of his writing made publication difficult.
- Irritable: Easily annoyed or angered.
- Cantankerous: Bad-tempered and quarrelsome.
- Curt: Rudely brief in speech or manner.
- Illegible: Not clear enough to be read.
- "A crabbed outlook on life": A persistently negative, irritable, or pessimistic view of the world.
- annoyed and irritable