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Crabbed   /kræbd/   Listen
adjective
Crabbed  adj.  
1.
Characterized by or manifesting, sourness, peevishness, or moroseness; harsh; cross; cynical; applied to feelings, disposition, or manners. "Crabbed age and youth can not live together."
2.
Characterized by harshness or roughness; unpleasant; applied to things; as, a crabbed taste.
3.
Obscure; difficult; perplexing; trying; as, a crabbed author. "Crabbed eloquence." "How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose."
4.
Cramped; irregular; as, crabbed handwriting.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Crabbed" Quotes from Famous Books



... which one suspects, which one never finds out exactly, but which one guesses pretty nearly." "What is it?" "I do not know anything about it. Mascaret leads a very fast life now, after having been a model husband. As long as he remained a good spouse, he had a shocking temper and was crabbed and easily took offense, but since he has been leading his present, rackety life, he has become quite indifferent; but one would guess that he has some trouble, a worm gnawing somewhere, for ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... together, partly for my own pleasure, and partly in the course of historical researches, a valuable collection of works on Storia Patria, which were sold by me when I gave up my house there. The reading of Italian, even very crabbed and ancient Italian which might have puzzled more than one "elegant scholar," became quite easy and familiar to me, but I have never attained a colloquial mastery over the language. I can talk, to be sure, with the most incorrect fluency, and ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... buttons. She concealed her gray hair under a frizzed wig known as the baby wig. Madame Magloire had an intelligent, vivacious, and kindly air; the two corners of her mouth unequally raised, and her upper lip, which was larger than the lower, imparted to her a rather crabbed and imperious look. So long as Monseigneur held his peace, she talked to him resolutely with a mixture of respect and freedom; but as soon as Monseigneur began to speak, as we have seen, she obeyed passively like her mistress. Mademoiselle Baptistine ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... of a crabbed, crooked stick, I would not have to look farther than yonder table," said the young lady, petulantly. "What you suppose about that dabbler in paint is about as far from the truth as your sketch of those who are my ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... brought us to their lands, in order to watch over them, and maintains us here for love of them. We must note that the Indians are not so bad as they seem to us.... It must also be observed that there are many Spaniards, and even ministers, who are melancholy and crabbed, and so ill-conditioned and moody, that everything wounds them, and they are contented with nothing. All the actions of the Indians displease them, and they even believe that the Indians do them purposely to make them impatient and to jest with them. From such ill-conditioned people the Indians ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin


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