Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Prone to outbursts of temper; easily angered.
- adj. Characterized by or resulting from anger.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Susceptible of anger; easily provoked or inflamed with resentment; choleric: as, an irascible man; an irascible temper.
- Excited by or arising from anger; manifesting a state of anger or resentment.
- Synonyms Irascible, Irritable, Passionate, hasty, touchy, testy, splenetic, snappish, peppery, fiery, choleric. Irascible indicates quicker and more intense bursts of anger than irritable, and less powerful, lasting, or manifest bursts than passionate.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Prone to anger; easily provoked or inflamed to anger; choleric; irritable.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. quickly aroused to anger
- adj. characterized by anger
Etymologies
- Middle English, from Old French, from Late Latin īrāscibilis, from Latin īrāscī, to be angry, from īra, anger; see eis- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“_ Not Neoptolemus so mirable] [W: Neoptolemus's sire irascible] After all this contention it is difficult to imagine that the critic believes _mirable_ to have been changed to _irascible_.”
“As God is the centre of our concupiscible affections, so sin is the object of those we call irascible; and the affections of love and hatred being the ground of all the rest, I must have a great care that I do not mistake or miscarry in them: for if these be placed upon wrong objects, it is impossible any of the rest should be placed upon right ones.”
“Recalling his irascible nature, I had to smile, and his presence was so real that I began speaking to his statue: 'How strange it is, Father, that you who ignored English in college and read none of the great novels, who concentrated solely on your engineering work, should have written a book of such merit that they put up a statue of you.”
Mexico
“Therefore hope resides in the higher appetite called the will, and not in the lower appetite, of which the irascible is a part.”
“Black George was, in the main, a peaceable kind of fellow, and nothing choleric nor rash; yet did he bear about him something of what the antients called the irascible, and which his wife, if she had been endowed with much wisdom, would have feared.”
“In the onslaught is displayed the animal excitement, the battle rage, which St. Thomas calls the irascible passion: and of this St. Thomas says, what Aristotle says of thymos, that it is an agency to be used by the rational will within due limits.”
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 6: Fathers of the Church-Gregory XI
“Furthermore, Mayor McGinn isn't at all "irascible" (prone to anger), Josh "hothead" Feit.”
“Why, then, would Twain appropriate David's name, in this "mighty strike" of a story, for an "irascible," "generally detested" murder victim?”
The Atlantic | July/August 2001 | Mark Twain's Reconstruction | Blount Jr.
“Two KwaZulu-Natal lawyers told Business Day he was "irascible" and impatient on the bench, but he was "revered" for his legal acumen.”
“In contrast, he believes Mr McCain has been badly advised in his campaign strategy and come across as "irascible".”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘irascible’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4084 more...
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Iaan
dirigisme, dystopia, cacotopia, ex ante, veritable, indefatigable, curmudgeon, desultory, antediluvian, transmogrify, pendent, elongate and 136 more...
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SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
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If You Can't Say Anything Nice
Negative attributes or actions.
biased, cantankerous, caustic, contumacious, dilatory, disdain, duplicitous, fastidious, fractious, glower, haughty, imperious and 12 more...
reesetee Hmm...are you feeling quickly aroused to anger, perhaps? ;-) Nov 8, 2007