fractiousin a sentence
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The fractious members are trying to agree on a policy.
fractious = quarrelsome (tending to argue or fight amongst themselves)
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He rode the horse out into the noon traffic and the horse was fractious and scared and it skittered about in the street and kicked a great dish into the side of a bus to the delight of the passengers who leaned out and called challenges from the safety of the windows.
(source)
fractious = easily upset and resistant to control
- It's full of rage, a fractious child screaming, "I hate you" at a parent.† (source)
- Laura was an uneasy baby, though more anxious than fractious.† (source)
- The gentlemen were all quarrelsome and fractious.† (source)
- Neighboring Bangor was largely Welsh and English, and the next town over was overwhelmingly German, which meant, given the fractious relationships between the English and Germans and Italians in those years, that Roseto stayed strictly for Rosetans.† (source)
- She fractious, you know.† (source)
- Herschel was willing to accept and shoulder more than his share of responsibility for their fractious relationship, but he could not begin to comprehend getting cut out completely.† (source)
- The leaders were tired and acting fractious.† (source)
- Bill Ramsey looks on sourly at the fractious scene.† (source)
- My source tells me the mood got very fractious.† (source)
show 31 more with this conextual meaning
- Prusias might have been king, but it seemed his kingdom comprised a somewhat fractious confederacy, where alliances shifted like the sand.† (source)
- The clans were a fractious lot, as Eragon well knew, and even as king, Orik had difficulty commanding their obedience.† (source)
- There was nothing wavering in it; no little trick to catch a transitory approbation from the discontented, or to soothe the fractious.† (source)
- Attolia, surrounded by her fractious barons, continued to be formal and remote.† (source)
- She was still too heavy with sleep to sound really fractious, but it was apparent that she felt there was some kind of injustice in the air.† (source)
- It was the same thing Tom had done when he rode a drunken cowboy's fractious horse in the dusty street of Bayfield to win a dollar.† (source)
- One thing troubled her upon that perfect day, that Jennifer was cutting her first tooth, and was hot and fractious.† (source)
- And so I made a skirt for her, weaving bright colours into the white cotton that she might like it, and so she did for a time, wearing it gladly, twirling it about her as she spun round and round; but when the novelty had worn off, she became fractious and wanted to tear it from her.† (source)
- a fractious animal that would not submit to the harness
- The baby's awful fractious, and I'm clean worn out attending to him. (source)
- I might be getting a little fractious myself.† (source)
- It implies that the offending part (heart, stomach, liver, whatever) is a fractious, bratty child, which can be brought into line with a slap or a sharp word.† (source)
- In the years when he was away at the war and the University, she had turned from an overalled, fractious, gun-slinging creature into a reasonable facsimile of a human being.† (source)
- Her only offspring were battles and corpses and trundling supply trains; stratagems too numerous to remember; oaths of friendship and fealty now worth less than a mummer's promise; and a halting, fractious, all-too-vulnerable army led by a Rider younger than she was herself.† (source)
- Fractious girl, don't you quote at me!† (source)
- Fractious, Ms.† (source)
- Five or six more men left the porch and surrounded the fractious beast, goosing him in the sides and making him show his temper.† (source)
- Flashing her needles, glancing round about her, out of the window, into the room, at James himself, she assured him, beyond a shadow of a doubt, by her laugh, her poise, her competence (as a nurse carrying a light across a dark room assures a fractious child), that it was real; the house was full; the garden blowing.† (source)
- The more his back ached and his muscle dissolved into fat and the fat melted off his bones, the more fractious he became with Janie.† (source)
- His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed.† (source)
- The baby's awful fractious, and I'm clean worn out attending to him.† (source)
- Tom was "fractious," as Roxy called it, and overbearing; Chambers was meek and docile.† (source)
- The punch being, by this time, drunk out, and the little Kenwigses (who had for some time previously held their little eyes open with their little forefingers) becoming fractious, and requesting rather urgently to be put to bed, the collector made a move by pulling out his watch, and acquainting the company that it was nigh two o'clock; whereat some of the guests were surprised and others shocked, and hats and bonnets being groped for under the tables, and in course of time found, their owners went away, after a vast dea† (source)
- 'So when she got a situation,' said Mr. Omer, 'to keep a fractious old lady company, they didn't very well agree, and she didn't stop.† (source)
- She then peeped round to where I sat; so stern a neighbour was too restrictive to him, in his present fractious mood, she dared whisper no observations, nor ask of him any information.† (source)
- There were men on foot, running hither and thither, talking shrilly and in all the tongues of Syria; men on horseback screaming to men on camels; men struggling doubtfully with fractious cows and frightened sheep; men peddling bread and wine; and among the mass a herd of boys apparently in chase of a herd of dogs.† (source)
- 'My feelings have been lancerated,' said Mrs Kenwigs, 'my heart has been torn asunder with anguish, I have been thrown back in my confinement, my unoffending infant has been rendered uncomfortable and fractious, Morleena has pined herself away to nothing; all this I forget and forgive, and with you, uncle, I never can quarrel.† (source)
- That is a fractious team for mortal men to master!† (source)
- His drinking continu'd, about which we sometimes quarrell'd; for, when a little intoxicated, he was very fractious.† (source)
- In other words, he enjoyed the cosseting for approximately twenty-four hours and then became in turn restive, restless, testy, irritable, cranky, fractious, and extremely bad tempered.† (source)
- Block tackle and a strangling pulley will bring your lion to heel, no matter how fractious, even Leo ferox there, the Libyan maneater.† (source)
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