crabby

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   irritable, bad-tempered, and inclined to complain

   He becomes crabby when he has skipped lunch.

2. 2
   adj

   resembling a crab or abounding in crabs

   The biologist searched the crabby shoreline for newly molted shells.

From crab + -y. The literal senses mean crablike or full of crabs; the temper sense belongs with older crabbed ("contrary, ill-tempered"), which also developed from figurative associations with the crab.

Topics

External links

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• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary