irritable

I

(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)

adj. fretful, petulant, peevish, touchy, sensitive. See irascibility.

II

(Roget's IV) modif.

Syn. sensitive, irascible, touchy, testy, ill-tempered, huffy, peevish, petulant, fractious, tense, high-strung, contentious, disputatious, resentful, fretting, carping, crabbed, hypercritical, out of humor, bearish, quick-tempered, short-tempered, easily offended, choleric, splenetic, glum, complaining, brooding, dissatisfied, plaintive, snarling, grumbling, surly, gloomy, ill-natured, morose, moody, fidgety, snappish, waspish, cantankerous, crotchety, curmudgeonly, captious, fretful, querulous, hypersensitive, ill-humored, annoyed, cross, cranky, churlish, grouchy, gruff, short, shrewish, sulky, sullen, crusty*, snappy*, having a short fuse*, thin-skinned*, pickle-pussed*, grumpy*, sour-bellied*; see also critical 2 , excitable , quarrelsome 2 .

Ant. pleasant*, agreeable, good-natured.

Syn.- irritable implies quick excitability to annoyance or anger, usually resulting from emotional tension, restlessness, physical indisposition, etc.; irascible and choleric are applied to persons who are hot-tempered and can be roused to a fit of anger at the slightest irritation; splenetic suggests a peevish moroseness in one quick to vent his malice or spite; touchy applies to one who is acutely irritable or sensitive and is too easily offended; cranky and cross suggest moods in which one cannot be easily pleased or satisfied, cranky because of stubborn notions or whims, and cross because of ill humor

III

(Roget's 3 Superthesaurus) a.

grouchy, touchy, cantankerous, irascible, crabby, testy, moody, snappy, grumbling, quick-tempered, petulant, grumpy.

ANT.: good-humored, good-natured, even-tempered

IV

(Roget's Thesaurus II) adjective Having or showing a bad temper: bad-tempered, cantankerous, crabbed, cranky, cross, disagreeable, fretful, grouchy, grumpy, ill-tempered, irascible, nasty, peevish, petulant, querulous, snappish, snappy, surly, testy, ugly, waspish. Informal: crabby, mean2. Idiom: out of sorts. See ATTITUDE.