All 9 Uses of

ornery
in
Walk Two Moons

Sometimes I am as ornery and stubborn as an old donkey.
p. 6.8

ornery = annoyed and uncooperative

I was being particularly ornery. I wouldn't sit down and I wouldn't look at Margaret.
p. 9.5

Your grandmother was the wildest, most untamed; most ornery and beautiful creature ever to grace this earth.
p. 70.6

ornery = quick to get annoyed, complain, argue, and be uncooperative

"I want to tell you something about Margaret," he said.
"Well, I don't want to hear it." I was feeling so completely ornery.
p. 83.9

ornery = annoyed and uncooperative

It would have been perfect except for that ornery crow calling away: car-car-car.
p. 86.1

ornery = uncooperative and complaining

Gram was released from the hospital the next morning mainly because she was so ornery.
p. 91.2

ornery = quick to get annoyed, complain, argue, and be uncooperative

Whenever anyone tried to console me about my mother, I had nearly chomped their heads off. I was a complete ornery old donkey. When my father would say, "You must feel terrible," I denied it. "I don't," I told him. "I don't feel anything at all." But I did feel terrible.
p. 127.5 *

They were not taking us seriously, and I felt my ornery donkey self waking up.
p. 174.4

Definitions:

(1) (ornery as in: is ornery when she first wakes up)
quick to get annoyed, complain, argue, and be uncooperative
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
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."