quarrelsome
/ˈkwɒr(ə)ls(ə)m
/adjective
Given to or characterized by quarrelling: a moody, quarrelsome man...
- His nameless sorrows ensure that he stands aloof, his distance from the other characters endowing him with a wisdom absent in the quarrelsome officers and journalists.
- Whenever he took cocaine, he became violent and quarrelsome.
- The Crusades did manage to reduce the number of quarrelsome and contentious knights in Europe.
Synonyms
argumentative, disputatious, disputative, contentious, confrontational, captious, factious, cavilling, pugnacious, combative, ready for a fight, defiant, hostile, antagonistic, bellicose, belligerent, militant, warring, fighting, battling;
threatening, litigious;
irascible, cantankerous, irritable, petulant, truculent, fiery, quick-tempered, hot-tempered, ill-tempered, bad-tempered, choleric;
bickering, wrangling
British informal stroppy
North American informal scrappy
Derivatives
quarrelsomely
- A powerfully built, middle-aged Irishman was standing at one end of that long table, and listening to the tale of the policeman who, finding him quarrelsomely and noisily drunk, and not being able to prevail with him to go home, had arrested him.
- Acquire the habit of challenging everything in the books you use, not quarrelsomely, but enquiringly.
- Richard, in his shirtsleeves, looks at him half quarrelsomely for a moment; then, with a nod, acknowledges that the minister has got the better of him, and sits down on the seat.
quarrelsomeness
- Dr. Young has found that taking tryptophan can affect human social behavior, decreasing aggression, irritability and quarrelsomeness.
- In the weeks that followed, I tried to pick up their trail - and found most people confine them to the fringes of cities or the wilderness, seeing them as layabouts addicted to drink and drugs and quarrelsomeness.
- From all the corners of the old political world, the rebels against the Matrix are gathering force; only their fragmentation and quarrelsomeness make them, for the moment, not completely formidable.