as in irritable
having or showing a habitually bad temper
an ill-natured and unpleasant old horse that sometimes bites
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Recent Examples of ill-natured
Annalise, the most ill-natured guest to embark on the Bravado since the legendary Carlos, complains about the absence of truffles (not in season) on her pasta.
—
Rafaela Bassili, Vulture, 20 Jan. 2026
Rafaela Bassili, Vulture, 20 Jan. 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for ill-natured
Adjective
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On the contrary, Juventus’ football soothed even the most irritable sections of the crowd.—
James Horncastle,
New York Times,
26 Jan. 2026
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This can include feeling irritable, having a low frustration tolerance, feeling easily overstimulated, and having rapid shifts in emotion.—
Korin Miller,
SELF,
20 Jan. 2026
Adjective
-
Local sheriffs have stepped up their efforts to warn residents of wolf sightings, posting alerts on social media that have garnered hundreds of comments from both concerned residents and environmentalists angry that the animals are the focus of so much fear and anger.—
Sharon Bernstein,
Sacbee.com,
6 Feb. 2026
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When federal agents can show up at your store, detain your employees, raid your parking lot and audit your hiring records, the calculation about whether to criticize federal policy looks very different than when the worst-case scenario is an angry tweet from a politician.—
Alessandro Piazza,
Fortune,
5 Feb. 2026
Adjective
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The cold was biting at that hour, and people hurried about, thinking of autumn—a season as bitter and disagreeable as a sour apple that could nonetheless hold a beautiful day or two in store before the freeze set in, a sudden blue sky washed clean by the wind or rain.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
22 Jan. 2026
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This danger is creating a modern sycophancy crisis in which the over-agreeableness of AI is leading to very disagreeable results.—
Arianna Huffington,
Time,
14 Jan. 2026
Adjective
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Lori Tan Chinn charms as a cantankerous Chinatown grandmother, while Jamie Lee Curtis makes a memorable meal of her single scene as a mob boss.—
Beandrea July,
IndieWire,
28 Jan. 2026
-
Ornery, bizarre, cantankerous, brilliant, talented, stubborn—all characters from our lives.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
16 Jan. 2026
Adjective
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Sun shrinking and getting hotter; everything bilious, oxygenless, not great for living.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
3 Nov. 2025
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Minaj’s bilious flurry is possibly related to claims that she is owed between $100 to 200 million related to her stake in Tidal, the music streaming service launched and spearheaded by Jay-Z in 2015 and was sold to Jack Dorsey’s company Square for $297 million in 2021.—
Andrew Flanagan,
Variety,
15 Oct. 2025
Adjective
-
Meanwhile, the commentator and controversialist Piers Morgan, an obsessively close observer and relentless critic of Meghan, inevitably waded in with his usual splenetic views.—
Sarah Lyall,
New York Times,
17 Sep. 2022
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And while there is enough splenetic wit and manic detail to generate obsessive fandom (entire sections of Web sites are dedicated to deciphering just what Kenny is mumbling), subjects like alien abduction, genetic engineering, and Kathie Lee are hardly original targets for satire.—
Chris Norris,
SPIN,
13 Aug. 2022
Adjective
-
Better is Danny Elfman’s spartan and fraught score, particularly the dyspeptic drums.—
Amy Nicholson,
Los Angeles Times,
8 Jan. 2026
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But Kael sensed in her less dyspeptic moments that there was something special about Redford.—
Stephen Galloway,
HollywoodReporter,
18 Sep. 2025
Adjective
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Sometimes he’d be sent out to deal with the more ornery guests in an effort to calm them.—
Stephanie Breijo,
Los Angeles Times,
14 Jan. 2026
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With its abundance of concrete, startling interior views, and play of deep shadows, the design invokes the ornery inventiveness of Kahn and Paul Rudolph, combined with the corporate sleekness of MoMA’s most recent iterations by Yoshio Taniguchi and Diller Scofidio + Renfro.—
Justin Davidson,
Curbed,
3 Nov. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Ill-natured.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/ill-natured. Accessed 7 Feb. 2026.
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