as in irritable
easily irritated or annoyed
I get crotchety after a long day at work
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Recent Examples of crotchety
The narrators of these stories are crotchety, easily nettled by the behaviors of other passengers.
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Jasmine Liu, The New Republic, 24 Oct. 2023
Not to mention mostly crotchety baseball writers, the most tenured of which make up the Hall of Fame voting electorate.
—Dallas News, 20 Jan. 2023
This casual yet momentous inversion of the domestic labors that Beauvoir cursed yields the indelible image of a crotchety old lady propped up with her small menagerie in bed, while, in the kitchen, the men marinate a leg of lamb for her dinner.
—Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker, 9 Aug. 2021
Ford is fine as the crotchety old outdoorsman, with Omar Sy and Cara Gee -- portraying the intrepid mail carriers -- the only other flesh-and-blood creatures that even register.
—Brian Lowry, CNN, 20 Feb. 2020
See All Example Sentences for crotchety
Recent Examples of Synonyms for crotchety
irritable
Adjective
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Some of the consequences of owing your body sleep are readily apparent, like feeling drowsy, irritable, or brain-foggy, or catching seemingly every virus.—
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Accompanying Rayner through these daily adventures were the irritable duck Chelveston (named after his English bomber base) and the gentle dog puppet Cuddly Dudley.—
Cite this Entry
“Crotchety.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/crotchety. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.
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