All 14 Uses
ornery
in
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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- I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong to the widow's if he wanted me, though I couldn't make out how he was a-going to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I was so ignorant, and so kind of low-down and ornery.†
Chpt 3ornery = easily annoyed and quick to complain and argue
- It was pretty ornery preaching—all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and preforeordestination, and I don't know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.†
Chpt 18
- The other fellow was about thirty, and dressed about as ornery.†
Chpt 19
- There was empty drygoods boxes under the awnings, and loafers roosting on them all day long, whittling them with their Barlow knives; and chawing tobacco, and gaping and yawning and stretching—a mighty ornery lot.†
Chpt 21
- Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot.†
Chpt 23
- But this time I somehow got to talking to him about his wife and young ones; and by and by he says: "What makes me feel so bad dis time 'uz bekase I hear sumpn over yonder on de bank like a whack, er a slam, while ago, en it mine me er de time I treat my little 'Lizabeth so ornery.†
Chpt 23
- Why, before, he looked like the orneriest old rip that ever was; but now, when he'd take off his new white beaver and make a bow and do a smile, he looked that grand and good and pious that you'd say he had walked right out of the ark, and maybe was old Leviticus himself.†
Chpt 24
- Sudden as winking the ornery old cretur went an to smash, and fell up against the man, and put his chin on his shoulder, and cried down his back, and says: "Alas, alas, our poor brother—gone, and we never got to see him; oh, it's too, too hard!"†
Chpt 24ornery = easily annoyed and quick to complain and argue
- Mary Jane she set at the head of the table, with Susan alongside of her, and said how bad the biscuits was, and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried chickens was—and all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to force out compliments; and the people all knowed everything was tiptop, and said so—said "How DO you get biscuits to brown so nice?" and "Where, for the land's sake, DID you get these amaz'n pickles?" and all that kind of humbug talky-talk, just the way people always does at a supper, you know.†
Chpt 26
- I felt so ornery and low down and mean that I says to myself; I'll hive that money for them or bust.
Chpt 26 *
- But I soon give up that notion for two things: she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she'd sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn't, everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they'd make Jim feel it all the time, and so he'd feel ornery and disgraced.†
Chpt 31
- The more I studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling.†
Chpt 31
- So we poked along back home, and I warn't feeling so brash as I was before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehow—though I hadn't done nothing.†
Chpt 33
- He said if we warn't prisoners it would be a very different thing, and nobody but a mean, ornery person would steal when he warn't a prisoner.†
Chpt 35
Definitions:
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(1)
(ornery as in: is ornery when she first wakes up) quick to get annoyed, complain, argue, and be uncooperative
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(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) Much more rarely (and seldom any more), ornery can describe someone as "low down", coarse, or unrefined. Mark Twain often used the word in that manner as in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn where he wrote: "The other fellow was about thirty, and dressed about as ornery." and "The more I studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling."