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 Synonyms for ill-natured
Adjective
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The symptoms are so delayed that people often blame them on food poisoning, irritable-bowel syndrome, gluten intolerance.
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Cancer could be affectionate and chatty one moment, and withdrawn and irritable the next, with little to no explanation.
Adjective
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The Commission ultimately left it at 400 feet, prompting an intense reaction from the angry crowd.
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Some of the women who were angry contacted the SFMOMA not simply to share feedback, but to try to ensure Bahr could never work with the institution again.
Adjective
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There are also a lot of people who have never dreamed of being disagreeable in public, much less considered joining a raucous social movement.
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The disagreeable object proved no match for the most fertile person in Montana.
Adjective
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Principle photography is underway in London, with Jurassic Park star Jeff Goldblum sharing his memories of contending with Winston’s cantankerous Tyrannosaurus Rex.
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The pièce de résistance is Belle’s willingness to engage with a cantankerous lion-man who has an outrageous temper, thanks to the chip on his very large shoulder.
Adjective
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Sun shrinking and getting hotter; everything bilious, oxygenless, not great for living.
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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.
Adjective
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Still, the internet nurtures these Hobbesian, splenetic views.
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Meanwhile, the commentator and controversialist Piers Morgan, an obsessively close observer and relentless critic of Meghan, inevitably waded in with his usual splenetic views.
Adjective
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Better is Danny Elfman’s spartan and fraught score, particularly the dyspeptic drums.
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But Kael sensed in her less dyspeptic moments that there was something special about Redford.
Adjective
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Leach also would publicly call out his players and could get ornery when questioned about his team’s shortcomings.
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The rabbi is ornery, arrogant, sometimes cruel.
Cite this Entry
“Ill-natured.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/ill-natured. Accessed 7 Jul. 2026.
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