Word of the Day

: October 28, 2023

irascible

adjective ir-RASS-uh-bul

What It Means

Someone who is irascible is easily angered and annoyed.

// That tidy little house belongs to an irascible crank who never has a kind word for any of his neighbors.

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irascible in Context

"If anyone earned the right to be an irascible octogenarian—especially when it comes to music—it's probably Bob Dylan. In a new interview with The Wall Street Journal, the singer-songwriter got the chance to do some ... sermonizing—sharing both astute points, and some rather curmudgeonly ones—about the state of contemporary music and the streaming era." — Jon Blistein, Rolling Stone, 19 Dec. 2022

Did You Know?

If you try to take apart irascible on the model of irrational, irresistible, and irresponsible you might find yourself wondering what ascible means—but that's not how irascible came to be. The key to the meaning of irascible isn't the negating prefix ir- (which is the form of the prefix in- that is used before words beginning with "r"), but rather the Latin noun ira, meaning "anger." From ira, which is also the root of irate and ire, came the Latin verb irasci ("to become angry") and the related adjective irascibilis, the latter of which led to the French word irascible. English speakers borrowed the word from French in the 16th century.