a. Orig. (and chiefly) U.S. [f. WRATH sb. + -Y1. Cf. WROTHY a.]
1. Of persons: Feeling, or inclined to, wrath; wrothful, very angry, incensed.
1807. North Star (Danville, VT), 17 Feb., 4/3. Mrs. Higgins, bristling up with anger, waxed exceeding wrathy, and brandishing her boot-trees, threatened to close her husband’s days, and put an end to her life.
1828. J. F. Cooper, Red Rover, viii. You are wrathy, friend, without reason.
1828. Webster, Wrathy, very angry; a colloquial word.
1833. [S. Smith], Lett. J. Downing, viii. (1835), 66. When things don’t go right, and the Gineral gits a little wrathy.
1859. Trollope, West Indies (1860), xiii. 198. They are wrathy men, and have rough sides to their tongues.
1887. Mrs. D. Daly, S. Australia, 397. The wrathy owner of the missing horses.
absol. 1902. C. G. Harper, Holyhead Road, II. 185. But the habitations of wrathy and peaceable are alike overthrown.
b. Marked or characterized by, expressing or evincing, deep anger or indignation.
1873. Miss Broughton, Nancy, II. 112. A wrathy red light has come into his deep eyes.
1890. Big Game N. Amer., 352. He was in a decidedly wrathy mood.
1897. H. G. Wells, Certain Matters (1898), 131. Coming back to wrathy swearing,… I am sorry to see it decay.
2. transf. Of the elements, etc.: Fierce, violent, tempestuous.
1872. Talmage, Serm., 100. The shrill blast of the wrathiest tempest that ever blackened the sky or shook the ocean.
1876. Miss Broughton, Joan, I. xxxi. The wrathy, masterful, winter sea.
Hence Wrathily adv., wrathfully. U.S.
1847. Webster.
1879. G. W. Cable, Old Creole Days (1883), 235. The negro begged; the master wrathily insisted.
