crossgrained

• “What crossgrained fiend has at once inspired you with what I suppose you wish me to call politic doubts and scruples of conscience, but which I can only regard as symptoms of fear and disaffection?”

  Saint Ronan's Well

• “He was, I admit, wild; but never such a crossgrained fellow as yourself; and yet he too had his daily dose of the whip.”

  Hung Lou Meng

• “I am rather crossgrained when I am not well pleased.”

  Grettir the Strong, Icelandic Saga

• “In making plywood the inside sheets are placed crossgrained with the face sheets.”

  The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan

• “I was too ruffled and crossgrained to talk to him, but I could not keep myself from watching him.”

  Montlivet

• “By rights and logically he ought to fall into rank with the rest of the gods; but there is a crossgrained element in his nature which keeps him out.”

  Hindu Gods And Heroes Studies in the History of the Religion of India

• “We do not like to see him become crossgrained, mean in disposition and stony hearted.”

  Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 2

• “She had an ideal of fatherhood, had gentle, silent, useless Lydia -- formed upon the genial, sunshiny type of parent popular in books, and she cast a romantic veil over disappointed, selfish, crossgrained Malcolm”

  Martie, the Unconquered

• “Does that satisfy you, you crossgrained old shellfish?”

  Kent Knowles: Quahaug

• “These are grounds for believing that legislators, while exhorting to virtue and putting certain courses of conduct forward as right and honourable, in the expectation that good men will obey the call, as their habits lead them, should at the same time inflict chastisements and punishments upon the crossgrained and disobedient; and as for the incurably vicious, put them beyond the pale altogether.”

  Moral Philosophy

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