cross-grained

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for cross-grained
Adjective
  • The trust's extensive provisions are just an example of Barnes' quirky and often cantankerous nature.
    Blake Gopnik, Newsweek, 19 Mar. 2025
  • The trust's extensive provisions are just an example of Barnes' quirky and often cantankerous nature.
    Blake Gopnik, Newsweek, 19 Mar. 2025
Adjective
  • If Alex has a bit more credibility, not being as intractable in her positions, both have a tendency to come off as disagreeable in their incessant bickering and self-righteousness.
    Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times, 26 Mar. 2025
  • If Alex has a bit more credibility, not being as intractable in her positions, both have a tendency to come off as disagreeable in their incessant bickering and self-righteousness.
    Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times, 26 Mar. 2025
Adjective
  • Trying to Kill Each Other' And Walken is marvelous — querulous, petty, cruel — as the Emperor.
    Tom Gliatto, Peoplemag, 29 Feb. 2024
  • Instead, Gerwig and Baumbach promote querulous sloganeering.
    Armond White, National Review, 19 July 2023
Adjective
  • In the Nineties, the report became a staple in the bilious feedstock of right-wing militias, part of a slurry of propaganda that turned legitimate grievances into the conviction that FEMA agents in unmarked black helicopters were soon to enact a new world order.
    Dan Piepenbring, Harper's Magazine, 19 Feb. 2025
  • The death chamber is nine feet by twelve feet, painted a bilious turquoise.
    Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker, 10 Feb. 2025
Adjective
  • Image Our collective longing to connect with animals is evident in the viral popularity of animal celebrities on social media — who can resist Pesto the chubby baby king penguin, Hua Hua the panda or Moo Deng, the ornery baby pygmy hippo?
    Alexandra Alter, New York Times, 23 Mar. 2025
  • Fitzgerald, 75, his daughter Heather Valdez, 53, and their team of family members, co-workers and an ornery parrot named Cisco have kept this wacky thrift-consignment-retail store afloat.
    Amanda Rosa, Miami Herald, 14 Mar. 2025
Adjective
  • An example: Sip and Polina have been thrown into Ian Mayfair’s home prison (a must for every supernatural villain property), complete with iron bars and a surly watchman, but this turns out to be an extremely minor setback.
    Kathleen Walsh, Vulture, 2 Mar. 2025
  • The Sum of a Career in Spaceflight Schirra had announced his plans to retire from NASA before the Apollo 7 flight, and a successful (if surly) mission, topped off with an Emmy Award and a Deep Draft Command certificate, wasn’t a bad way to wrap up a nine-year career at the agency.
    Kiona N. Smith, Forbes, 12 Mar. 2025
Adjective
  • Nottingham Forest, European champions in the two previous campaigns under the management of the irascible but brilliant Brian Clough, wanted to sign him — as did Liverpool.
    Tom Burrows, New York Times, 27 Mar. 2025
  • But poor casting was only half of it — Charles Walters' 1955 adaptation unfortunately reimagines the heroine as an irascible antisocial brat with delusions of grandeur, all explained away by bizarre contemporary psychoanalysis provided in voice-over.
    EW.com, EW.com, 4 Mar. 2025
Adjective
  • Rojas’s recollections weren’t peevish—fine work was produced under these conditions.
    Ian Parker, The New Yorker, 20 Jan. 2025
  • The songs are muscular and syncretic as ever, but the normally peevish rapper doesn’t maintain his trolling energy for the full record, settling into a questioning and pensive pace.
    Stephen Kearse, TIME, 8 Dec. 2024
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

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Cite this Entry

“Cross-grained.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/cross-grained. Accessed 24 Apr. 2025.

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