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irascible
in a sentence

show 86 more with this conextual meaning
  • His father paused and looked back - the harsh level stare beneath the shaggy, graying, irascible brows.   (source)
  • It is entirely different from the usual irascible beefing he delights in and which no one takes seriously.   (source)
  • To those who appreciate the extraordinary irascibility of the Invisible Man, the rest of the encounter will be easy to imagine.   (source)
    irascibility = short temper (tendency to anger easily)
  • Laura, on the other hand, had taken to religion in a serious way during Mr. Erskine's tenure: she was still frightened of God, but forced to choose between one irascible, unpredictable tyrant and another, she'd chosen the one that was bigger, and also farther away.†   (source)
  • Dumbledore had gone, Hagrid had gone, but he had always expected Professor McGonagall to be there, irascible and inflexible, perhaps, but always dependably, solidly present… 'I don't wonder you're shocked, Potter,' said Madam Pomfrey, with a kind of fierce approval in her face.†   (source)
  • His notes were handed to me now—irascible, helpful.†   (source)
  • Uncle Monty taught them how to handle the Inky Newt without getting its black dye all over their fingers, and how to tell when the Irascible Python was grumpy and best left alone.†   (source)
  • Catelyn had been a girl the last time she had visited the Twins, but even then Lord Walder had been irascible, sharp of tongue, and blunt of manner.†   (source)
  • The old man was irascible at times, but he never seemed to mind taking time for Eragon.†   (source)
  • Now Burnham faced the prospect of having to go alone to meet these legendary architects—one of them, Hunt, a man also of legendary irascibility.†   (source)
  • Even as I grew to love Florida with its mild winters, spicy food, and comically irascible mix of people, I did not stop dreaming of someday escaping to my own private paradise—not a postage-stamp-sized lot in the heart of hyperprecious Boca Raton but a real piece of land where I could dig in the dirt, chop my own firewood, and tromp through the forest, my dog at my side.†   (source)
  • While it did not incapacitate the president, it did weaken him and, according to his cabinet, made him even more irascible.†   (source)
  • Doc Daneeka demanded, lifting his delicate immaculate dark head up from his chest to gaze at Yossarian irascibly for a moment with lachrymose eyes.†   (source)
  • He stretched his wings--it was like a huge, irascible yawn--then settled again.†   (source)
  • He cleared his throat and shifted irascibly in his chair.†   (source)
  • It seemed incredible to Lin, his closest colleague, that the irascible older man who imposed such order but still wanted to arrest an Australian brawler for causing Dragonfly to lose face, could have been reached by Sheng Chou Yang and corrupted … No, impossible* Perhaps, thought the major, he should go back and examine further a comical off-duty agent who wanted all clients to be told he was in the Antarctic, or the overworked father of triplets who was willing to answer phones to…†   (source)
  • On occasion Anthony grew raucous and irascible and Florence released him into limitless freedom outside.†   (source)
  • "But professor," our irascible companion went on, "can't you see that we could die of hunger in this iron cage?"   (source)
    irascible = easily angered
  • "What does he come here cheeking us for, then?" cried Master Kidderminster, showing a very irascible temperament.   (source)
  • Colonel Cathcart stared down at it with an irascible scowl.†   (source)
  • Ron, however, had always been used to three delicious meals a day, courtesy of his mother or of the Hogwarts house-elves, and hunger made him both unreasonable and irascible.†   (source)
  • Only in a culture of honor would it have occurred to the irascible gentleman that shooting someone was an appropriate response to a personal insult.†   (source)
  • He looked ugly, for his wound had been sewn up unevenly, and being one-eyed and one-horned had made him even more irascible.†   (source)
  • He sighed, thinking once more of Luke the irascible, then returned to his desk and sat down to rest a minute.†   (source)
  • By the time they'd finished dessert and coffee, the pain was beginning to overwhelm the pills and Luke was irascible again, baiting her, nagging her as though he did not know as well as she did why they went through these scenes.†   (source)
  • 'Come on, Washington,' the corpulent colonel broke in irascibly.†   (source)
  • He would sit with his Look magazine, at home in his livingroom, squinting irascibly, fascinated, at the blurry color photograph of a waitress with breasts completely bare, smiling, standing in what looked like a kind of cardboard window, holding out a coffeepot to Clumly.†   (source)
  • (then drowsily irascible) You're a cockeyed liar.†   (source)
  • He had never been an irascible man and before war was actually declared and Mississippi seceded, his acts and speeches of protest had been not only calm but logical and quite sensible.†   (source)
  • He was almost barefoot, crawling with lice, and he was hungry, but his irascible spirit was unimpaired.†   (source)
  • She is still there, the gray woman with a cold, harsh, irascible face, who bore five children in six years and raised them to man--and womanhood.†   (source)
  • Uncle Henry was a short, pot-bellied, irascible old gentleman with a pink face, a shock of long silver hair and an utter lack of patience with feminine timidities and vaporings.†   (source)
  • She rode away a slave; she returned in '66 still a slave, on foot now--a huge woman, with a face both irascible and calm: the mask of a black tragedy between scenes.†   (source)
  • On the third irascible burring he took up the receiver and grumbled, "Yes, yes, vot iss it?"†   (source)
  • Mr. Braithwaite, large and irascible, glowered at him over his spectacles.†   (source)
  • "The deuce take Old Maid Pyncheon!" muttered the irascible housewife.†   (source)
  • That hiss, faint as it was, irritated the irascible gentleman, and sealed the culprit's fate.†   (source)
  • Intrepid, energetic, irascible, stormy; the most cordial of men, the most formidable of combatants.†   (source)
  • The irascible Mr. Smallweed scratches the air.†   (source)
  • Catlee came up with a huge armload of wood, which he dropped with a crash, a little too near Pruitt to suit his irascible mood.†   (source)
  • Rarely had Martin been inspired to perceive the magic of a perfect hour, so absorbed was he ever in irascible pondering, but now he was caught, and lifted in rapture.†   (source)
  • "And is that all you did about it, Foretopman?" gruffly demanded another, an irascible old fellow of brick—colored visage and hair, and who was known to his associate forecastlemen as Red Pepper; "Such sneaks I should like to marry to the gunner's daughter!" by that expression meaning that he would like to subject them to disciplinary castigation over a gun.†   (source)
  • Mr. Wrench was a small, neat, bilious man, with a well-dressed wig: he had a laborious practice, an irascible temper, a lymphatic wife and seven children; and he was already rather late before setting out on a four-miles drive to meet Dr. Minchin on the other side of Tipton, the decease of Hicks, a rural practitioner, having increased Middlemarch practice in that direction.†   (source)
  • I am irascible.†   (source)
  • His education tends, then, to give him the character of a supercilious and a hasty man; irascible, violent, and ardent in his desires, impatient of obstacles, but easily discouraged if he cannot succeed upon his first attempt.†   (source)
  • It is true that he was irascible by nature, "of an unstable and unbalanced mind," as our justice of the peace, Katchalnikov, happily described him.†   (source)
  • Here the irascible old gentleman gave a great knock on the ground with his stick; which was always understood, by his friends, to imply the customary offer, whenever it was not expressed in words.†   (source)
  • It is clear that the irascible miller was a man to interpret any chance-shot that grazed him as an attempt on his own life, and was liable to entanglements in this puzzling world, which, due consideration had to his own infallibility, required the hypothesis of a very active diabolical agency to explain them.†   (source)
  • I told my grandmother of it, when we had our next conference at the trap-door, and begged of her not to allow the children to be impertinent to the irascible old man.†   (source)
  • Like some poor devils ashore that happen to know an irascible great man, they make distant unobtrusive salutations to him in the street, lest if they pursued the acquaintance further, they might receive a summary thump for their presumption.†   (source)
  • But how was it possible for a man of my undecided turn of mind to argue successfully with so irascible a person as the Professor?†   (source)
  • Unlike our irascible friend Wrench, he had the easiest way in the world of taking things which might be supposed to annoy him, being a well-bred, quietly facetious man, who kept a good house, was very fond of a little sporting when he could get it, very friendly with Mr. Hawley, and hostile to Mr. Bulstrode.†   (source)
  • And to tell you all the truth while I am about it,' said Mr Flintwinch, crossing his arms, and becoming the express image of irascible doggedness, 'I have been rasped—rasped these forty years—by your taking such high ground even with me, who knows better; the effect of it being coolly to put me on low ground.†   (source)
  • Thence sprang a feverish state of excitement in which the impatient irascible traveller devoted to perdition the railway directors and the steamboat companies and the governments which allowed such intolerable slowness.†   (source)
  • He had to deal with holly bushes, nettles, hawthorns, eglantines, thistles, and very irascible brambles.†   (source)
  • Making himself very amiable to the infant phenomenon, was an inebriated elderly gentleman in the last depths of shabbiness, who played the calm and virtuous old men; and paying especial court to Mrs Crummles was another elderly gentleman, a shade more respectable, who played the irascible old men—those funny fellows who have nephews in the army and perpetually run about with thick sticks to compel them to marry heiresses.†   (source)
  • And, doubtless, he would, in this first outbreak, have carried the intention into effect without a moment's consideration of the consequences, if he had not been restrained, in part, by corresponding violence on the side of Mr. Brownlow, who was himself of an irascible temperament, and party by such arguments and representations as seemed best calculated to dissuade him from his hotbrained purpose.†   (source)
  • Not one conversation with Sviazhsky, though he had said a great deal that was clever, had interested Levin; but the conclusions of the irascible landowner required consideration.†   (source)
  • This did not suit Jo at all, but she accepted the place since nothing better appeared and, to every one's surprise, got on remarkably well with her irascible relative.†   (source)
  • But it is easy to perceive that the South, which has given four Presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, to the Union, which perceives that it is losing its federal influence, and that the number of its representatives in Congress is diminishing from year to year, whilst those of the Northern and Western States are increasing; the South, which is peopled with ardent and irascible beings, is becoming more and more irritated and alarmed.†   (source)
  • Moreover (Levin felt that the irascible landowner had been right) the peasants made their first and unalterable condition of any agreement whatever that they should not be forced to any new methods of tillage of any kind, nor to use new implements.†   (source)
  • The threat sounded awful, but did not alarm Jo, for she knew the irascible old gentleman would never lift a finger against his grandson, whatever he might say to the contrary.†   (source)
  • This dear good Sviazhsky, keeping a stock of ideas simply for social purposes, and obviously having some other principles hidden from Levin, while with the crowd, whose name is legion, he guided public opinion by ideas he did not share; that irascible country gentleman, perfectly correct in the conclusions that he had been worried into by life, but wrong in his exasperation against a whole class, and that the best class in Russia; his own dissatisfaction with the work he had been…†   (source)
  • Something in Conway's voice, and still more in his succeeding silence, roused the youth to irascibility.†   (source)
  • There wasn't the slightest possible chance that they could go to the Lighthouse tomorrow, Mr. Ramsay snapped out irascibly.†   (source)
  • Well, so long—(He stops and looks back—with frightened irascibility) Bejees, where are you, Hickey?†   (source)
  • HOPE—(irascibly) Crazy is right!†   (source)
  • It was this constant urging, coupled with irascibility and energy, for three long hours.†   (source)
  • 'I know that, fool, do I not?' said Ralph, irascibly.†   (source)
  • At the presentation to him then of some minor matter interrupting the current of his thoughts he would show more or less irascibility; but instantly he would control it.†   (source)
  • They spoke of the sayings and doings of their commander, the Grand Duke, and told stories of his kindness and irascibility.†   (source)
  • The people along the road failed not to laugh at his motley procession; on the other side, it was observed that, with all his irascibility, he was not in the least offended by their rudeness.†   (source)
  • "My aged companion," said Obed, struggling to keep down a rising irascibility, that he conceived would ill comport with the dignity of his character, "your system is erroneous, from the premises to the conclusion; and your classification so faulty, as utterly to confound the distinctions of science.†   (source)
  • 'It had been left to her, unconditionally, by her first husband,' Mr. Murdstone began, when my aunt caught him up with the greatest irascibility and impatience.†   (source)
  • Whereupon cards followed, with aunt Kimble's annual failure to follow suit, and uncle Kimble's irascibility concerning the odd trick which was rarely explicable to him, when it was not on his side, without a general visitation of tricks to see that they were formed on sound principles: the whole being accompanied by a strong steaming odour of spirits-and-water.†   (source)
  • Now, as a half-smile was sufficient to awaken the irascibility of the young man, the effect produced upon him by this vociferous mirth may be easily imagined.†   (source)
  • The Chivery parents were not ignorant of their son's attachment—indeed it had, on some exceptional occasions, thrown him into a state of mind that had impelled him to conduct himself with irascibility towards the customers, and damage the business—but they, in their turns, had worked it out to desirable conclusions.†   (source)
  • But Vronsky was startled and annoyed by the nervous irascibility with which Golenishtchev talked of the subject that engrossed him.†   (source)
  • The clerk having now again gone in to say that they are still there and Mr. Tulkinghorn being heard to return with some irascibility, "Let 'em come in then!" they pass into the great room with the painted ceiling and find him standing before the fire.†   (source)
  • "Where are we?" asked my uncle irascibly, as if he felt much injured by being landed upon the earth again.†   (source)
  • Perhaps his irascibility demanded compensation for some tediousness that the visitor had expended on him; however that was, he took such umbrage at seeing his wife with her apron over her head, that he charged at her, and taking her veiled nose between his thumb and finger, appeared to throw the whole screw-power of his person into the wring he gave it.†   (source)
  • Then they began to have a few irascible words when it waxed hotter, both, needless to say, appealing to the listeners who followed the passage of arms with interest so long as they didn't indulge in recriminations and come to blows.†   (source)
  • He was moreover, as the reader may perhaps have conceived, somewhat irascible in his nature.†   (source)
  • Black George was, in the main, a peaceable kind of fellow, and nothing choleric nor rash; yet did he bear about him something of what the antients called the irascible, and which his wife, if she had been endowed with much wisdom, would have feared.†   (source)
  • Many contending passions were raised in our heroe's mind by this letter; but the tender prevailed at last over the indignant and irascible, and a flood of tears came seasonably to his assistance, and possibly prevented his misfortunes from either turning his head, or bursting his heart.†   (source)
  • Jones, who, notwithstanding his good humour, had some mixture of the irascible in his constitution, leaped hastily from his chair, and catching hold of Blifil's collar, cried out, "D—n you for a rascal, do you insult me with the misfortune of my birth?"†   (source)
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