bad-tempered

adjective

bad-tem·​pered ˈbad-ˈtem-pərd 

: easily annoyed or angered : having or showing a bad temper : surly, ill-tempered

Bad-tempered drivers banged on the door and left cursing without a fare.

—Deborah Levy

It's not a good idea to make a love story about two people who are so self-absorbed, sniveling and bad-tempered that the audience wants them to end up in a dumpster, not living happily ever after.

—Ralph Novak

Examples of bad-tempered in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The second leg was even more bad-tempered than the first. — Dan Sheldon, New York Times, 20 May 2026

Moose mothers, having lost a significant portion of their young, can also be bad-tempered by the time June rolls around. — Jim Geraghty, Washington Post, 20 June 2024

Who among us has not gazed in dismay at a world that’s not just increasingly bad-tempered, but seems to hold against each one of us some focused, individual grudge? — Jessica Kiang, Variety, 9 Oct. 2023

In Nigeria, for example, a small and bad-tempered snake called the West African carpet viper is responsible for most of the country's bites. — Cassandra Willyard, Scientific American, 19 Sep. 2023

Childhood visits to Kenya were a mission in themselves—three days of connecting flights and interminable transits in Athens, Cairo, and Nairobi before arriving, bleary-eyed and bad-tempered, in Mombasa. — Selina Denman, Condé Nast Traveler, 9 Nov. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1671, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for bad-tempered

• distempered
• untempered
• tempered