Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Ill-tempered; nagging.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Having the qualities of a shrew; given to exhibitions of ill temper; vixenish: applied to women.
Wiktionary
- adj. Of or pertaining to a shrew, a nagging, ill-tempered woman.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. having the qualities of a shrew; having a scolding disposition; froward; peevish.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. continually complaining or faultfinding
Etymologies
- shrew + -ish (Wiktionary)
Examples
“In Norway, for example, when Gro Harlem Brundtland became prime minister in 1981, she had to endure some of the same sexist scrutnisation which Hillary is currently facing (i.e. the woman is a "witch or a bitch", and has a "bad temper" and tends to sound "shrewish" when "agitated").”
“Hillary also won over my skeptical staff at the US embassy, many of whom had read the negative US press about her and expected that she would be a kind of shrewish Dragon Lady.”
“He calls her "shrewish", "looking (and failing, evidently) to find someone or something in”
“But these days, bravado in men on screen plays chauvinistic and strength boorish, where for women, good sense is written as shrewish and vulnerability weak.”
The Huffington Post: Emily Bracken: Romantic Comedies Are Dying Because Romance Is Dead
“Most of the main characters are emotionally balked men who hide from their exasperated, shrewish wives by throwing themselves into their work and who are given to as in one story "building tall towers of self-pity and then watching them sway.”
“It was the one thing he feared about her — that pain and disappointment had made her bitter, shrewish.”
“Colonel Tigh is an angry bitter drunk, and Ellen is his shrewish and manipulative ex-wife.”
“As the years pass, the generation of grandchildren grows up to face its own difficulties – a hated boarding school, the uncertainty about a lost father, a sad, shrewish mother.”
“Dear Lydia, you can consider yourself honored at least to be the opposite of a shrewish man hater of which there is no shortage.”
“The dual stability categorical currents of a transformation have been Petruchio's plead to tame a shrewish Kate, whom he has customarily married, as good as a foe in in in in between multiform fervent wooers to capture a pleasing Bianca, Kate's younger sister, right widely separated accessible for matrimony given Kate has been to a altar.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘shrewish’.
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Quaintnesses
For those who wish no words were ever forgotten
opprobrium, tedium, encomium, odium, ire, enmity, beguile, wile, brazen, popinjay, squit, hoity-toity and 1161 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
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Wrapped up in books
I'm reading books. And there are words and phrases I come upon for the first time, or that are used with usages that are new to me.
So, this is just a plain list of those words. Don't expect ...hobble, mackerel, crone, cavort, hoyden, rheumy, scatter, hiss, recoil, trundle, shatter, flaxen and 200 more...
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A Mean Disposition
Fun adjectives to describe temperamental people.
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fbharjo's Words
jumelle, kef, kenspeckle, lautitious, essentic, pilpulistic, impavid, cicurant, clou, chrysostomic, miasma, teleology and 1625 more...
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Anger Mismanagement
churlish, vendetta, retaliatory, bellicose, excoriate, enfant terrible, imperious, vitriolic, upbraid, umbrageous, lambaste, inveigh and 67 more...
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Animal Magnetism
Adjectives derived from animal names but used to describe people
dogged, foxy, bearish, bullish, pigheaded, birdbrained, catty, wolfish, bullheaded, horsy, weaselly, squirrelly and 39 more...
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Nakoo's list of useful words.
repudiate, shrewish, spurious, superfluous, circuitous, plagiarize, inculcate, convoluted, unctuous, plethora, belie, expurgate and 64 more...
Tweets
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madmouth Also see waspish Apr 11, 2009