a. colloq. Also 8 cantanckerous. [Said by Grose, who spells it contankerous, to be a Wiltshire word. This spelling gives some support to the conjecture that the word was formed on ME. contak, conteke, contention, quarrelling, contekour, conteckour one who raises strife, whence *conteckerous, *contakerous would be a possible deriv. like traitorous, which might subseq. be corrupted under influence of words like cankerous, rancorous. Its oddly appropriate sound, and perh. some assoc. with these words, have given it general colloquial currency.]
Showing an ill-natured disposition; ill-conditioned and quarrelsome, perverse, cross-grained.
1772. Goldsm., Stoops to Conq., II. There’s not a more bitter cantanckerous road in all christendom.
1775. Sheridan, Rivals, V. iii. I hope, Mr. Faulkland … you won’t be so cantanckerous.
1842. Miss Mitford, in L’Estrange, Life (1870), III. ix. 142. As cantankerous and humorous as Cassius himself.
1865. Livingstone, Zambesi, ix. 195. A crusty old bachelor or … a cantankerous husband.
1873. St. Paul’s Mag., I. 533. A cantankerous element in his nature.
Hence Cantankerously adv., Cantankerousness.
1868. A. K. H. Boyd, Lessons Mid. Age, 217. One impracticable, stupid, wrongheaded, and cantankerously foolish person of the twelve.
1876. Mrs. H. Wood, Orville Coll., II. xii. 276. You have behaved cantankerously to him.
1881. A. R. Hope, in Boy’s Own Paper, 10 Sept., 794. The roller had crushed the cantankerousness right out of him.
1886. Chr. Life, 2 Jan., 2/6. A member … expelled for general cantankerousness.
