fractious
/ˈfrakʃəs
/adjective
1(Typically of children) irritable and quarrelsome: they fight and squabble like fractious children...
- And I'm usually alright in the morning but by about lunchtime in the afternoon I tend to get very irritable and fractious and I'm not quite sure why.
- Suffice to say, I would not recommend this level of preparation when travelling with a fractious three-year-old and a grumpy husband.
- He was getting fractious and crabby while I was getting panicky because I knew there was something else and I couldn't remember what it was.
Synonyms
grumpy, grouchy, crotchety, in a (bad) mood, cantankerous, bad-tempered, ill-tempered, ill-natured, ill-humoured, peevish, having got out of bed the wrong side, cross, as cross as two sticks, disagreeable, pettish;
irritable, irascible, tetchy, testy, curmudgeonly;
crabbed, crabby, waspish, prickly, peppery, touchy, scratchy, crusty, splenetic, shrewish, short-tempered, hot-tempered, quick-tempered, dyspeptic, choleric, bilious, liverish, cross-grained
informal snappish, snappy, chippy, on a short fuse, short-fused
British informal shirty, stroppy, narky, ratty, eggy, like a bear with a sore head
North American informal cranky, ornery, peckish, soreheaded
Australian/New Zealand informal snaky
informal, dated waxy, miffy
1.1(Of a group or organization) difficult to control; unruly: King Malcolm struggled to unite his fractious kingdom...
- For 110 years, it has remained a fractious but unitary organization.
- He was chosen for his ability to unite the fractious coalition and for his ability to connect to people.
- A system without it could lead to division and multiple parties - and imagine the fractious problem of coalition governments.
Synonyms
wayward, unruly, uncontrollable, unmanageable, out of hand, obstreperous, difficult, headstrong, refractory, recalcitrant, intractable;
disobedient, insubordinate, disruptive, disorderly, undisciplined, troublemaking, rebellious, mutinous, anarchic;
defiant, stubborn, obstinate, contrary, wilful
archaic contumacious
Derivatives
fractiously
- ‘You should know that if you were at a convent school,’ he says, a bit fractiously.
- For all of the rhetoric about teamwork in the health professions, most work is fractiously divided.
- The council had promised a review of the rating system and had put the idea out for consultation, but when it came to the vote, it fractiously split down the middle.
fractiousness
/ noun ...- All the fractiousness isn't surprising really.
- Day-to-day resilience is as necessary in New York as a wet suit in ice water, in part to deal with fractiousness of the city's own creation.
- For all of our fractiousness and various feints left, right and center, we are the grown up party.
Origin
Late 17th century: from fraction, probably on the pattern of the pair faction, factious.