ornery adj : having a difficult and contrary disposition; "a cantankerous and venomous-tongued old lady"- Dorothy Sayers [syn: cantankerous, crotchety]

English

Pronunciation

• a UK /ˈɔːnəɹi/, /"O:n@ri/
• a US /ˈɔːɹnɚɹi/

Adjective

1. Cantankerous, stubborn, disagreeable.

   He gets awfully ornery when he doesn’t get his way.

   • John Updike, Rabbit at Rest

     “Grandpa, what’s ‘ornery’?” “Oh, you know. Mean. Contrary. Rebellious.”

Translations

aureate, baleful, balky, base, bearish, bitchy, bombastic, breachy, cankered, cantankerous, churlish, common, consonant, contrary, contumacious, crabbed, cranky, cross, cross-grained, crotchety, crusty, cussed, declamatory, defiant, difficult, disagreeable, euphuistic, excitable, feisty, flowery, fractious, froward, grandiloquent, harmful, hateful, huffish, huffy, impatient of control, iniquitous, invidious, irascible, irritable, loud, magniloquent, malefic, maleficent, malicious, malign, malignant, mean, nasty, noxious, obstreperous, oratorical, orotund, paltry, perverse, plangent, poor, recalcitrant, refractory, resounding, restive, ringing, rotund, round, rubbishy, shoddy, sleazy, snappish, sonorous, spiteful, spleeny, splenetic, stentorian, stuffy, sulky, sullen, tatty, testy, ugly, unruly, vibrant, vinegarish, vinegary, waspish, wayward, wicked, wild, wrongheaded