Citations:irascible

English citations of irascible

Adjective

• 1879 July 1, “The Contributors' Club”, in The Atlantic‎^[1]:

  When Benvenuto Cellini flies out against his traveling companion, who broke through a bridge on horseback, with an exclamation that it is only "because the Lord is ofttimes merciful to fools that questa bestia and that other bestia, his horse, were not drowned," we laugh, but the laugh goes against the irascible goldsmith, who never could let slip the opportunity of making himself an enemy.

• 1886 August 1, “The Contributors' Club”, in The Atlantic‎^[2]:

  The difference between the mental characteristics of the two sexes, for example: the hen is very peaceable, chanticleer very irascible; the hen is an industrious scratcher, while chanticleer is naturally an idler, and thinks that if he crows and fights, that is enough; the hen takes care of the chicks all day, chanticleer only occasionally giving them a bug, and oftener a dig; the hen takes care of them all night also, chanticleer elbowing them off the perch to get the best place for himself; the hen, having seized another hen about the head, never lets go till the feathers come out, and never stops fighting till nearly dead, while chanticleer fights only for glory, and gives up long before he is hurt much; when they are fed, the hen attends strictly to business and gets all she can, while chanticleer will pick up a morsel, and wave it up and down with frantic eagerness to be seen of the hen, and values the flattery of having her take it from him more than the food.

• 1888 March 1, “Are Good-Natured People Uninteresting?”, in The Atlantic‎^[3]:

  {...} — to sing about the coffin, " Sister, thou wast irascible and interesting." And even in the case of the living, I must confess to a preference for an equable and obliging disposition, especially in a woman.

• 1891 May 1, “Comment on New Books”, in The Atlantic‎^[4]:

  He was a hard-headed, irascible democrat, who found everybody beside himself irascible.

• 1904 January 1, William James, “Laura Bridgman”, in The Atlantic‎^[5]:

  She was sternly handled at home, and was irascible and an object of fear and pity to all but one of the village neighbors, and that one was half-witted.

• 1906 August 1, Arthur C. Benson, “Vulgarity”, in The Atlantic‎^[6]:

  He is vain, irascible, undignified, fond of strong liquor, unduly rhetorical; but he is never exactly vulgar.

• 1907 September 1, Edward Dowden, “Elizabethan Psychology”, in The Atlantic‎^[7]:

  In its function of seeking what is desirable, it is named the "concupiscible" appetite; in its function of repelling or evading evil it is named the "irascible" appetite.

• 1915 November 1, Charles Johnston, “The Reincarnation of Maung Hkin”, in The Atlantic‎^[8]:

  'A fiery old person!' Hari Kishto Babu commented; 'a highly irascible old person!'

• 1918 November 1, “International Pitch”, in The Atlantic‎^[9]:

  Because he is unkempt, cross-eyed and myopic, shaves only on Sundays, needs about eighty-five dollars' worth of dental attention, and is inclined to be irascible, I dare say the demands upon Vandeever for philosophical utterances are infrequent.

• 1922 August 1, “Hay Fever: A Paroxysm”, in The Atlantic‎^[10]:

  If this sensation is not brought to a victorious conclusion, it leaves its medium suspended in air, thwarted, irascible.

• 1925 September 1, “Hey Diddle Diddle!”, in The Atlantic‎^[11]:

  However, it took Papa Fleet, the irascible son-in-law, to make Mother Goose's story worth the telling.

• 1927 November 14, The New York Times, “The Irascible Employer.”, in The New York Times‎^[12]:

  Joseph Cawthorn is very good as the irascible old Hancock.One of the interesting numbers on the stage section of the program is the "Dance of the Skeletons," performed by Russell E. Markert's sixteen dancing girls.

• 1928 May 1, R. M. Gay, “A President Is Born”, in The Atlantic‎^[13]:

  Henry, the idealistic brother; the Old Gentleman, the irascible but likable father; Stevy, as long as he is a drunkard; even Bek, the woman of iron and sentiment, though her goodness palls — all these catch at one's heartstrings; and the pictures of household, street, restaurant, school, farm, and suburb are brilliantly painted, though as with palette knife and thumb rather than with brush.

• 1929 October 1, “Nasus Americanus”, in The Atlantic‎^[14]:

  These men, and the women who shared their perils, were alert, long-suffering, laconic, and irascible.

• 1932 December 1, Claude M. Fuess, “Untitled Book Review”, in The Atlantic‎^[15]:

  Mr. Bennett Champ Clark's John Quincy Adams (Atlantic Monthly and Little, Brown, $3.75), the best volume yet published on the subject, is, on the whole, sound in its judgments and accurate in its portraiture; the reader will derive from it a fair, well-proportioned picture of the irascible Adams and his stormy times.

• 1934 October 1, Edward Weeks, “The Atlantic Bookshelf: Conclusion”, in The Atlantic‎^[16]:

  Here is the story of a valiant, poverty-stricken American family, the lather irascible, debt-ridden, and a failure; Willa, the mother, 'marching by the beaten man,' and the three daughters, one of whom is touched with insanity.

• 1935 December 1, Gardner Harding, “The New Deal and Foreign Trade”, in The Atlantic‎^[17]:

  Outside of a somewhat irascible tone, generally expressed in footnotes, this is an admirably objective book, dealing cunpetently with a subject that is susceptible of profound and dangerous misunderstanding.

• 1938 January 1, Karl Schriftgiesser, “Portrait of a Mayor: Fiorello La Guardia”, in The Atlantic‎^[18]:

  Because of his impatience with stupidity and his hatred of cupidity he has earned the reputation of an irascible man, a dictatorial individual, and the terrible-tempered Mr. Bang of politics.

• 1938 November 1, “Hew to the Coils!”, in The Atlantic‎^[19]:

  Growing irascible from lack of sleep, I appealed to the proprietor of the shop where the mattress was originally bought.

• 1940 December 1, “The Vanishing Virginian”, in The Atlantic‎^[20]:

  As a citizen, husband, and paterfamilias he was an egoist of irascible temper, untrammeled speech, and irresistible charm.

• 1944 April 1, Edward Weeks, “The Peripatetic Reviewer”, in The Atlantic‎^[21]:

  The South American general and the irascible French chef are much too alive to be preposterous; the English governess and the Spanish beauty are both of them women within reach of the mind though they, too, do the most preposterous things.

• 1945 August 1, Edward Weeks, “The Peripatetic Reviewer”, in The Atlantic‎^[22]:

  This yapping, unchecked for an hour, would get to my father, who was never the least irascible of men, and I can remember one Sunday dinner when his patience snapped.

• 1946 November 1, John N. Burk, “Handel”, in The Atlantic‎^[23]:

  Handel at first sight was a corpulent, irascible bachelor like his contemporary Dr. Johnson, living in an age addicted to heavy eating.

• 1947 January 1, Edward Weeks, Louise Hollis Black, “The Peripatetic Reviewer”, in The Atlantic‎^[24]:

  We are the most irascible drivers in the world.

• 1947 December 1, Edward Weeks, “The Peripatetic Reviewer”, in The Atlantic‎^[25]:

  Pedestrians poise at the intersections of the noisy stream until the irascible trucks and cars are momentarily becalmed by the red and yellow light; then they hurry between the bumpers, dragging behind them the intimidated Airedale who hoped he was going to grass.

• 1949 March 1, “Washington”, in The Atlantic‎^[26]:

  He is said to have an irascible streak which may not be helpful in the conduct of affairs.

• 1950 May 1, Charles J. Rolo, “Reader's Choice”, in The Atlantic‎^[27]:

  Through a misunderstanding he incurs the wrath of Cardinal Glennon, the irascible Archbishop of Boston, and he is banished to a desolate rural parish on the Canadian border.

• 1952 February 1, Charles J. Rolo, “Reader's Choice”, in The Atlantic‎^[28]:

  And now John Shipley — irascible and self-pitying in his middle age—has discovered that he loves Katherine and has made her promise to start a new life with him when he returns from Europe.

• 1952 April 1, “The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington”, in The Atlantic‎^[29]:

  Another cause of inaction may be seen in the attitude of Senator Tom Connally, the irascible chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

• 1952 October 1, “The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington”, in The Atlantic‎^[30]:

  Such unconvinced critics feel, not that Stevenson is anyone's "captive," but that the ties which bind a candidate to all the tired, discouraged, and irascible elements which go to make up a party twenty years in power are too strong to be snapped by anyone save the electorate itself.

• 1953 February 1, Edward Weeks, “The Peripatetic Reviewer”, in The Atlantic‎^[31]:

  Here are the bearded giants: Major General Thomas Jonathan Jackson with his wide, steadfast eyes, Ulysses Simpson Grant with that stubborn thrust of his lower jaw, Lee and Stuart, and the clearest of all, William Tecumseh Sherman, his wrinkled face irascible and sensitive; and here are those who brag: Pope, the portly and grandiloquent, Mullock with his flabby cheeks, and little Mac who protested that he never had enough to do the things he dreamed of.

• 1953 March 1, Edward Weeks, “The Peripatetic Reviewer”, in The Atlantic‎^[32]:

  Gus, nicknamed "Gubber" at Emmanuel Academy, is an outsider; he never quite belongs and it makes him irascible.

• 1953 October 1, Sue Sayle Reith, “Letters I Never Mailed”, in The Atlantic‎^[33]:

  The only trouble with my irascible pastime is that quite often I feel I have settled matters simply by jotting down my views.

• 1955 August 1, Edward Weeks, “The Peripatetic Reviewer”, in The Atlantic‎^[34]:

  His two grandfathers lived to a ripe age, and the more colorful and irascible of the pair, his Grandfather Myron Adams, who was born in 1799, was until his very last breath, in his nineties, an independent, keen-witted, outspoken Yankee.

• 1956 February 1, Edward Weeks, “The Peripatetic Reviewer”, in The Atlantic‎^[35]:

  He, of course, is supported by the West Indian aristocracy (personified by Julian Fleury, whose family acres and old house, Belfontaine, have been in the family for generations) and to a lesser extent by the planters who have moved in since the war — men like Colonel Carson, still suffering from his old wounds, harddrinking and irascible.

• 1956 February 1, Carl Rose, “Save Our Symbols!”, in The Atlantic‎^[36]:

  Like the Atlantic writer on plastic tape, he included an irascible sentence implying that notably conservative cartoonists would probably stick to their traditional and incorrect conception.

• 1958 June 1, Edward Weeks, “The Peripatetic Reviewer”, in The Atlantic‎^[37]:

  Probing and irascible, sparing in his praise, he shows the courage and the meanness which were both part of this forgotten fight, and he reminds us in his stirring prose of what the victory, achieved in one hour, meant to the Colonies.

• 1960 May 1, Osbert Sitwell, “Two Dinner Parties”, in The Atlantic‎^[38]:

  SIR OSBERT SITWELL'S four volumes of reminiscences, which were published in this country under the AtlanticLittle, Brown imprint, stand as a peerless monument to Victorian and Edwardian England, and those who have read them will be unlikely to forget the brilliant portrait of the original and irascible Sir George Sitwell and of Henry Moat, his discerning and eloquent butler.

• 1961 August 1, Osbert Sitwell, “Father and I”, in The Atlantic‎^[39]:

  SIR OSBERT SITWELL'Sfive volumes of reminiscences, which were published in this country under the AtlanticLittle, Brown imprint, stand as a peerless monument to Victorian and Edwardian England, and those who have read, them will be unlikely to forget the brilliant portrait of the original and irascible Sir George Sitwell and of Henry Moat, his discerning and eloquent butler.

• 1962 April 1, Edward Weeks, “The Peripatetic Reviewer”, in The Atlantic‎^[40]:

  He was a born salesman, and, coming of age when motors were fresh on the market, he devoted his eager, attractive, sometimes irascible energies to selling Fords (the model F), Studebakers, the Maxwell, and the Chrysler; in his selling he roved from Scotland to the Continent to Saint Petersburg; and at the age of forty and still a bachelor, he was brought to the point of exhaustion by hypertension.

• 1962 May 1, S. L. A. Marshall, “The Summer of 1914”, in The Atlantic‎^[41]:

  As a British lieutenant doingliaison with General Lanrezac's Fifth French Army, and being a writer born, Spears was ideally seated to do the "little picture."For it was Lanrezac who directly opposed General von Kluck's First German Army, the sledgehammer of the Schlieffen Plan, and it was Spears in person who shuttled between Lanrezac and that irascible irresolute, Field Marshal Sir John French, commander of the BEF.

• 1962 September 1, “Canada”, in The Atlantic‎^[42]:

  Now he was the chastened, often irascible leader of a star-crossed regime which seemed unable to do much right.

• 1963 January 1, Edward Weeks, “The Peripatetic Reviewer”, in The Atlantic‎^[43]:

  Newport and Shinnecock Hills got into the act, and as the play moved north or west the irascible Charlie Macdonald was consulted for the new layouts.

• 1964 September 1, Edward Weeks, “The Peripatetic Reviewer”, in The Atlantic‎^[44]:

  There are others the future biographer will draw on and the most recent, BEFORE THE COLORS FADE by FRED AYER, JR. (Houghton Mifflin, $6,00), a family close-up of Georgie Patton recorded by his favorite nephew, whom he nicknamed "Bowser." Here is George S. Patton as he was at the family dinner table, in the hunting field, and in full blasphemy on a polo pony; here he is as a yachtsman sailing across the Pacific by dead reckoning; here is his unalterable belief in his destiny ("It is my destiny to lead the biggest army ever assembled"); and here he is with his irascible rudeness as he marked time during the "Long Armistice." A Colonel and Acting Brigadier in 1918, who was severely wounded in the Argonne, Patton had to contain himself in garrison life for twenty-one years before his full rank was restored.

• 1965 October 1, Edward Weeks, “The Peripatetic Reviewer”, in The Atlantic‎^[45]:

  I speak of them with varying degrees of intimacy, and I should judge HAROLD LATHAM to be the most modest and the least irascible of them all.

• 1966 January 1, Edward Weeks, “The Peripatetic Reviewer”, in The Atlantic‎^[46]:

  A short story of a bucolic love affair carried on against the irascible opposition of the father seemed uncommonly good to "F.C." and me, and with our recommendations went up to the boss.

• 1967 July 1, Carol Barsi, “The Permanent Resident”, in The Atlantic‎^[47]:

  They brought buckets and jugs of seawater home with them, and each of the three children carried a dixie cup: one held a pair of irascible crabs and another housed some snails and the third held five flashing little opaleyes.

• 1968 January 1, Edward Weeks, “The Peripatetic Reviewer”, in The Atlantic‎^[48]:

  The father, Solomon Abrams, M.D., is a huge barrel of a man, with a dark Mohawk head, big biceps, and an irascible temper, His practice has been slipping, and he is driven to profanity by the disloyalty and nonpayment of his patients.

• 1968 April 1, Edward Weeks, “The Peripatetic Reviewer”, in The Atlantic‎^[49]:

  It would have been an adventure to have lived close to Harold Ross, the founding editor of the New Yorker, for any length of time, and I am grateful to JANE GRANT, ROSS'S first wife, for lifting the window shade on her partnership with that droll, gifted, and irascible man, as she does in ROSS, THE NEW YORKER AND ME (Reynal & Morrow, $5.95).

• 1969 April 1, Edward Weeks, “The Peripatetic Reviewer”, in The Atlantic‎^[50]:

  In his new work entitled A Dog's Life, he has gone on a literary binge, writing a jeu d'esprit about an unpretentious English family who have grown old and irascible on dwindling capital.

• 1970 June 1, Herbert Gold, “Reviewmanship and the I-Wrote-a-Book Disease”, in The Atlantic‎^[51]:

  It has an air of cool omnipotence which a breathing and irascible human being cannot achieve naturally, subject as human beings are to fits of whim and responsibility.

• 1971 May 16, The New York Times, “My Three Guides: From the Irascible To the Romantic”, in The New York Times‎^[52]:

  THE new dehumanized tape tours may be the "In" thing now, but my wife, Lee, and I would not exchange them for some very human encounters with the irascible Mr. Winkler in Paris, the hospitable Albert in Copenhagen and the dashing Ramon in Barcelona during stopovers on our recent 40‐day cruise to Europe.

• 1973 September 23, The New York Times, “Mary Tyler Moore's irascible Boss Is a Pussycat”, in The New York Times‎^[53]:

  The boss of that TV studio — the WJM‐TV newsroom — is Lou Grant, Mary Richards's gruff, tough, irascible boss.

• 1977 March 27, Ross Thomas, “Killing The Columnist”, in The Washington Post‎^[54]:

  Working without any discernible encouragement (especially from his irascible, well-drawn managing editor) Jordan goes after the story.

• 1978 February 1, Milton Viorst, “Peru: The Mismanaged Revolution”, in The Atlantic‎^[55]:

  As the tensions of government worsened, he became more irascible, given to inflammatory statements and imperious acts.

• 1978 July 16, The New York Times, “For World's Chess Title, It's Mr. Cool vs. Hothead”, in The New York Times‎^[56]:

  The challenger, 47‐year‐old Viktor Lvovich Korchnoi, has a reputation as the most hot‐headed, intense, irascible competitor in a world of hot‐headed, intense and irascible competitors.

• 1979 November 28, Megan Rosenfeld, “Irascible but Lovable, And Always Joking”, in The Washington Post‎^[57]:

  "I play irascible but lovable old bastards," said Jack Albertson, looking neither.

• 1979 December 2, Susan Wood, “The World that Walt Built”, in The Washington Post‎^[58]:

  And millions of fans have apparently agreed for some 45 years, ever since the irascible duck made his debut in one of Disney's Silly Symphonies -- The Little Wet Hen.

• 1980 February 8, Judith Martin, “'Robert et Robert': Dull Characters Doing Dull Deeds”, in The Washington Post‎^[59]:

  To illustrate this thesis, two of life's losers, an irascible taxi driver played by Charles Denner and a timid student policeman played by Jacques Villeret, go to a matrimonial bureau where, failing to meet prospective wives, they meet each other.

• 1980 May 3, “Another Resignation Accepted”, in The Washington Post‎^[60]:

  Unlike self-effacing Cyrus Vance, Abraham Lincoln's secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, had made a habit of resigning periodically, if only to compel Lincoln to decline the irascible Ohioan's threat to leave.

• 1980 September 16, Jay Matthews, “The Modern Peasant”, in The Washington Post‎^[61]:

  Yet these days, at age 50, his close-cropped hair thinning back over a nut-brown scalp, the sometimes irascible comrade Song feels he has finally arrived.

• 1980 December 17, Gary Arnold, “Knuckles &”, in The Washington Post‎^[62]:

  At the combination homestead-auto graveyard where Philo resides with Orville and Orville's irascible Ma (Ruth Gordon), the hero can usually be found under a truck chassis or lugging engine blocks around.

• 1981 February 17, Jean M. White, “Irascible Barrister”, in The Washington Post‎^[63]:

  Those who missed Rumpole's debut last year have a second chance to discover the delightfully quirky, irascible British barrister.

• 1981 March 1, Julian Symons, “The View From Battersea Bridge”, in The Washington Post‎^[64]:

  To portray irascible, humorous Thomas and nervy, witty Jane, two people who as she once said had a skin too few for ordinary living, the authors have cunningly elaborated on events recounted in Jane's letters, and reminscences by or about Carlyle.

• 1981 March 11, Paul Richard, “Night Stalker”, in The Washington Post‎^[65]:

  He has always been a loner, original, irascible.

• 1981 May 1, “The Elusive Gifts of Great Teachers”, in The Washington Post‎^[66]:

  Histrionic, irascible and self-regarding, many of them seem to have used their seminars and classes as little more than showrooms in which to polish and refit their notions and theories.

• 1981 August 15, “In Hunt of Mercy and Romance”, in The Washington Post‎^[67]:

  The sporting sequences are loaded with intriguing subsidiary characters: aging guide Blackie LaVoi (an irascible dipso with a face "the color of duck meat" who can prattle for hours about "bear hide and goosedown, moose meat and venison"); and his slatternly sidekicks, Gladdy and Poo Poo, two pliable bimbos who staff the camp and double as $30 hookers.

• 1981 November 8, Jonathan Yardley, “Amusements and Diversions From the Thurber Carnival”, in The Washington Post‎^[68]:

  JAMES THURBER was often an irascible and difficult

• 1982 January 3, Mark, “Serving Curry In All Its Curious Combinations”, in The Washington Post‎^[69]:

  WHAT DID you get when an irascible but talented Chinese cook employed by an American family in a pre-World War II Philippines outpost prepared "curry"?

• 1982 January 10, The New York Times, “On Language”, in The New York Times‎^[70]:

  He is a thundering curmudgeon: irascible, opinionated, brilliant, intimidating, and I wish I had taken his class.

• 1982 May 7, Alan Cowell, “NIGERIAN CAPITAL: A TORRID, IRASCIBLE, BOOMING CITY”, in The New York Times‎^[71]:

  The traffic jams, or go-slows in local parlance, are among the world's most stubborn, the prices are the world's highest, and with the congestion and heat, it probably ranks among the world's most irascible cities.

• 1983 May 22, Megan Rosenfeld, “"Candide's' Surreal Survival”, in The Washington Post‎^[72]:

  Even Voltaire himself, a thin, irascible genius constantly at odds with the prevailing 18th-century thought, lives on, in the persona of an appropriately bony and bewigged Richard Bauer ensconced in a gilded study hung above the stage.

• 1983 May 29, Paul Hodge, “Up The Garden Path”, in The Washington Post‎^[73]:

  The three have a good deal in common: they all turn out differently from what you expected," says Viscount Lambton in his chatty and somewhat irascible chapter in The Englishman's Garden, a lush, glorious guide to the small private gardens of 33 Englishmen from assorted walks of life. {...}

• 1983 June 9, Megan Rosenfeld, “The 'Ties' That Bind”, in The Washington Post‎^[74]:

  In this case the main question is what to do with Grandmother, an irascible old dear who is starting to forget things and behave strangely.

• 1984 February 2, Margot Hornblower, “Koch Lets Hair Down in Biography 'Mayor'”, in The Washington Post‎^[75]:

  The mayor of New York, the irascible and irrepressible Ed Koch, is once again basking, not to say wallowing, in attention.

• 1984 June 24, The New York Times, “MR. IRASCIBLE AND MISS INVINCIBLE: TENNIS HAS A PROBLEM”, in The New York Times‎^[76]:

  So, we are left with Mr. Irascible and Miss Invincible.

• 1985 June 20, Courtl, “The Snyder Story”, in The Washington Post‎^[77]:

  He is the poor man's showman -- enigmatic and irascible, the self-righteously reversed image of his federal foes who have dubbed him "Hollywood Snyder."

• 1985 October 29, “Champions of Missouri”, in The Washington Post‎^[78]:

  Now on the mound was the irascible Joaquin Andujar, warming up for a mad scene that would have done credit to Maria Callas.

• 1986 January 4, Herbert Denton, “Czech Defector Joins NHL's Maple Leafs”, in The Washington Post‎^[79]:

  Harold Ballard, the irascible, staunchly conservative Maple Leafs owner, said he expected that Ihnacak would bolster his limping team, currently 10-20-5 and in fourth place in the Norris Division.

• 1986 January 20, Chuck Conconi, “PERSONALITIES”, in The Washington Post‎^[80]:

  Someone should sit down, have a talk with the irascible, ill-mannered actor Sean Penn and point out that when photographers are no longer interested in taking pictures of him and his wife, pop singer Madonna, the couple will probably be looking for work.

• 1986 January 23, Stephanie Mansfield, “Norris Mailer, Out of Arkansas”, in The Washington Post‎^[81]:

  Norris Church Mailer, Norman Mailer's sixth and current wife, was a high school art teacher when she fell in love with the irascible author and decided to follow him to New York.

• 1986 May 4, The New York Times, “AN IRASCIBLE SHOWMAN COMES BACK TO BROADWAY”, in The New York Times‎^[82]:

  He limps slightly as he walks into the Music Box Theater, an irascible master showman returning to Broadway.

• 1986 September 25, Lyle V. Harris, “Adopt-a-Goat Program Seeks Homes for a Herd”, in The Washington Post‎^[83]:

  Bloom contends that, despite their reputation for being irascible and malodorous, the goats possess some of the same qualities as cats and dogs and therefore would make good pets.

• 1987 May 24, “DEATHS ELSEWHERE”, in The Washington Post‎^[84]:

  From 1967 through 1970, Mr. Rey appeared as an irascible nightclub owner opposite Sally Fields' Sister Bertrille in the light-hearted situation comedy "The Flying Nun."

• 1987 September 4, David Richards, “'FATHER,' STILL POWERFUL”, in The Washington Post‎^[85]:

  A series of intimate family scenes, wrapped in first-person narration, it chronicles a middle-aged son's attempts to love an irascible father, whose domineering and egocentric ways make love supremely difficult.

• 1987 September 10, George F. Will, “ANTISMOKING MOVEMENT IT'S JUST SELF-DEFENSE”, in The Washington Post‎^[86]:

  They increasingly resemble the man Joseph Epstein, the essayist, says could not be described as irascible because he was permanently irasced.

• 1987 October 25, Mary Battiata, “THE GORILLA'S BEST FRIEND”, in The Washington Post‎^[87]:

  The battle she waged along the way -- against poachers, local cattle herders, Rwandan bureaucrats, tourists, rival conservation groups, and anyone else who threatened the gorillas or their dwindling domain -- earned her a reputation as the irascible hellcat of Rwanda's Parc National Des Volcans.

• 1987 December 11, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., “WHY A RENOWNED HAWK IS MELLOW”, in The Washington Post‎^[88]:

  The other day, with a heroic portrait of irascible old Andrew Jackson gazing down on him in the Oval Office, a benevolent president, mellowing through the last months of the longest presidency since Ike's, expounded to four journalists on his benign view of the world.

• 1988 February 14, Patricia Brennan, “SLAP GETS A GIRL”, in The Washington Post‎^[89]:

  In his first season on ABC, irascible sportswriter "Slap" Maxwell ditched his former wife at their re-marriage ceremony and never did the honorable thing for Judy, the Ledger secretary he bedded.

• 1988 October 29, Colman Mccarthy, “SALUTE TO MORTON MINTZ”, in The Washington Post‎^[90]:

  Two farewell parties -- one given by The Post, his company, the other by the Newspaper Guild, his union -- were gatherings of newspeople who saw in Mintz a spillway of talent, passion and irascible growl.

• 1989 October 1, Judith Martin, “WHEN ALL DECORUM IS LOST”, in The Washington Post‎^[91]:

  "Eccentric" is the polite term for the irascible elderly, and "respect" the polite way to treat such people.

• 1989 December 22, Hank Burchard, “A BIG DRAW DUMMY DILBERT”, in The Washington Post‎^[92]:

  He's the cartoonist who created Dilbert, the cheerful dummy who keeps flying the U.S. Navy's airplanes into the water, and Grampaw P. S. Pettibone, the world's oldest and most irascible naval aviator.

• 1990 March 15, Rita Kempley, “NEW ON TAPE”, in The Washington Post‎^[93]:

  While messing around with the invention, the Szalinski children -- teenager Amy (Amy O'Neill) and her kid brother, Nick (Robert Oliveri) -- are shrunk along with the hated neighbor kids -- teenager Russ (Thomas Brown) and his irascible younger brother, Ron (Jared Rushton).

• 1990 April 12, “MAPLE LEAFS' OWNER BALLARD DIES AT 86”, in The Washington Post‎^[94]:

  TORONTO, APRIL 11 -- Harold Ballard, the irascible owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, died today at age 86.

• 1990 June 10, Reid Beddow, “ALL IN THE IBM FAMILY”, in The Washington Post‎^[95]:

  Not a hint here of the terrible Watson temper, the irascible father, the nasty sibling rivalry, the hesitant way in which IBM entered the computer business (1989 sales: $62.7 billion).

• 1990 November 1, Craig M. Carver, “Word Histories: Etymologies Derived From the Files of the Dictionary of American Regional English”, in The Atlantic‎^[96]:

  Snarky may have been influenced or reinforced by the British slang narky, "illtempered, irascible," which may be from nark, referring to an unpleasant, quarrelsome person, in an extension of the earliest meaning "an informer" or "one who watches." ("If it was thought we were coppers' narks it could endanger the lives of our film crews"—London Times, 1975).

• 1991 June 9, “NEW IN PAPERBACK”, in The Washington Post‎^[97]:

  These two books -- mostly memoir, with the occasional recipe -- relate his culinary education, with pen portraits of irascible chefs, kitchen anecdotes and vignettes of hotel and restaurant life.

• 1991 September 27, Tracy Thompson, “DRUG CASE ADDS MEANING TO COURT'S SCALES OF JUSTICE”, in The Washington Post‎^[98]:

  He was saved by an irascible judge, a scientist and a calibrated weighing scale.

• 1992 March 2, Sam Roberts, “METRO MATTERS; 50 Years of Crime, and Stereotypes”, in The New York Times‎^[99]:

  To which the judge, after considering Mr. Rossi's testimony that "it was the custom of yourself as well as your countrymen to carry guns," declared: "It is unfortunate that this is the custom with you and your kind, and that fact, combined with your irascible nature, furnishes much of the criminal business in this country."

• 1992 June 5, Caryle Murphy, “ARAFAT'S HEALTH REVIVES OLD ISSUES”, in The Washington Post‎^[100]:

  CAIRO -- During the hours after Yasser Arafat's plane crash in the Libyan desert in April, as the Middle East ambivalently pondered the pluses and minuses of life without the irascible Palestine Liberation Organization leader, some Palestinian officials were frantically asking each other another question: "Where's the notebook?"

• 1992 June 12, Hank Burchard, “COMMUNISM'S POSTER CHILDREN”, in The Washington Post‎^[101]:

  One answer is the artists, those irascible and irrepressible elements who bedevil all societies, slave or free.

• 1992 August 6, Lois Romano, “THE RELIABLE SOURCE”, in The Washington Post‎^[102]:

  The once-again irascible Bob Dornan had words with at least two of his colleagues on the House floor yesterday after a "one-minute" speech in which the California Republican slammed Bill Clinton.

• 1993 June 27, Karen Karbo, “And Baby Makes Two”, in The New York Times‎^[103]:

  Taylor has found love of sorts with a musician named Jax, who plays keyboard for a group called the Irascible Babies.

• 1993 July 18, Scott Moore, “'HEIDI'”, in The Washington Post‎^[104]:

  He is stubborn, irascible and ultimately lovable in his relationship with his orphaned granddaughter, played by Noley Thornton, who against his objections is left in his care and then taken away to be a companion for an invalid girl.

• 1993 December 1, Gordon S. Wood, “America in the 1790s: In a Book Twenty-Five Years in the Making, Two Historians Examine the High Politics and Great Person Ages of Our Nation's First Decade”, in The Atlantic‎^[105]:

  The authors have provided sketches of a dozen or more lesser figures involved in the story of this passionate decade in the nation's history—from the irascible Philip Freneau, the sometime poet and journalist who became a principal voice of Republican invective, and the sardonic Gouverneur Morris, who was the only Foreign Minister to remain in Revolutionary France through the period of the Terror, to the worldly Talleyrand, the French Foreign Minister who survived multiple changes of regime in France simply by never adhering to any principle.

• 1994 January 28, Lloyd Rose, “THEATER”, in The Washington Post‎^[106]:

  As Gregory Solomon, the junk dealer-cum-kvetch-cum-sage who inhabits Arthur Miller's 1968 play the way a genie lives in a lamp, Prosky is fastidious, charming, irascible, commanding.

• 1994 April 8, Jeanne Cooper, “A PRESCRIPTION FOR SHAW”, in The Washington Post‎^[107]:

  The Shakespeare Theatre has leapt several hundred years forward with its current choice of playwright, the irascible, iconoclastic Irishman George Bernard Shaw.

• 1994 May 29, Carol Shields, “CONSEQUENCES OF A MOMENT”, in The Washington Post‎^[108]:

  Alice Goodwin, the novel's main character, is an intelligent, somewhat irascible woman, the mother of two small daughters, living with her husband on a dairy farm in southeast Wisconsin -- what might almost be called Jane Smiley country.

• 1994 July 22, Frank Van Riper, “THE NEGATIVES OF FAKERY”, in The Washington Post‎^[109]:

  Smith was an irascible genius who brooked no limits on his work, especially from editors, whom he seemed to regard as a lower life form.

• 1994 September 9, Mark Jenkins, “FALL'S POST-PUNK”, in The Washington Post‎^[110]:

  As always, the album's highlights are its irascible mantras, notably the unusually quick-tempoed "Hey! {...}

• 1994 September 10, Lee Fleming, “GALLERIES”, in The Washington Post‎^[111]:

  For example, Winslow bases "The Irascible Eighteen" on a group picture of abstract expressionist painters that once appeared in Life magazine.

• 1995 July 7, Warren Brown, “BMW 740IL: LETTER PERFECT”, in The Washington Post‎^[112]:

  But something of his old irascible self was stirring this particular morning.

• 1995 July 23, Martie Zad, “LOVEJOY' BRINGS SLEUTHING SKILLS TO HOME MARKET”, in The Washington Post‎^[113]:

  Four inimitably rich and funny exploits of the irascible and disreputable antiques dealer, as portrayed by Ian McShane, are packaged by A&E Video in a boxed set ($59.95, or $14.95 each; call 1-800-828-6565).

• 1995 October 23, “SIR KINGSLEY AMIS DIES”, in The Washington Post‎^[114]:

  Sir Kingsley Amis, 73, the prolific British novelist, poet and essayist who began his career as one of Britain's rebellious "Angry Young Men" and over the next four decades came to be seen as an irascible guru of political incorrectness with a distaste for feminism, died Oct. 22 at St. Pancras Hospital here.

• 1996 May 18, “NICE RADIO? NOT YET.”, in The Washington Post‎^[115]:

  Infinity Broadcasting (34 major market stations and growing) employs and relentlessly defends, among others, the irascible Howard Stern and the outrageous G. Gordon Liddy.

• 1997 January 23, “AROUND THE NHL”, in The Washington Post‎^[116]:

  CHERRY ON TOP: Don Cherry, the irascible co-host of Hockey Night in Canada's Coach's Corner, is the choice of many fans to coach the dismal Maple Leafs.

• 1997 March 18, Sarah Kaufman, “'HARRY LONDON': A CLUTTERED LIFE”, in The Washington Post‎^[117]:

  London, played by Hal Blankenship, is an irascible nonconformist -- the CEO who doesn't go along with the family wishes; the Yiddish-spouting widower who has a young non-Jewish girlfriend (Deborah Hazlett); the rich Southerner who's been fair to African American customers and employees and seen one ascend to city hall with his support.

• 1997 May 12, Lois Romano, “THE JUDGE'S COURT ORDER”, in The Washington Post‎^[118]:

  Although they sometimes describe Matsch (pronounced Maych) as "curt" and "irascible," lawyers also praise him for being an exacting and fair judge who puts a premium on legal ethics, preparation and punctuality.

• 1997 June 29, The New York Times, “The Other Abstract Expressionist”, in The New York Times‎^[119]:

  A passionate, sometimes irascible woman, Mitchell in her will directed Kertess to write the text for this volume, which includes 120 color plates; it is the most complete study of her work to date.

• 1998 January 4, Michiko Kakutani, “Culture Zone; This Mouse Once Roared”, in The New York Times‎^[120]:

  The irascible personality of Mickey's successor, the foot-stomping Donald Duck, similarly made him a favorite mascot for an increasingly cocky America in the wake of World War II.

• 1998 June 7, The New York Times, “Books in Brief: Fiction”, in The New York Times‎^[121]:

  When the novel opens, the lively, acerbic narrator, Ambrose (Blue) Belew, has been summoned home to Dura, Ga., where his father, the irascible Senator Austin Belew, is said to be at death's door.

• 1998 June 10, Michael Kimmelman, “Dieter Roth, Reclusive Artist And Tireless Provocateur, 68”, in The New York Times‎^[122]:

  Dieter Roth, a prolific, notoriously irascible, reclusive and eccentric German-born artist-provocateur who built a formidable reputation in Europe but remained something of a mystery in America, in part because he permitted his work to be exhibited here even more rarely than there, died on Saturday in Basel, Switzerland, where he had a home.

• 1998 July 4, Anne Swardson, “FOR DUTCH, EVERYTHING IS 'FINE'”, in The Washington Post‎^[123]:

  Then, irascible midfielder Edgar Davids was sent home mid-tournament.

• 1999 February 13, John Hooper, “Restorers reveal hand of master”, in The Guardian‎^[124]:

  The work in question is a statue of Pope Julius II, the irascible, dissolute pontiff who laid the foundation stone for St Peter's Basilica and commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

• 1999 March 19, The New York Times, “HOME VIDEO; Wehabilitating Bugs, Boop et al.”, in The New York Times‎^[125]:

  The year is 1936, and in Tom Palmer's animated short, Cupid is doing his best to bury arrows into the obstinate W. C. Fields and an equally irascible woman with whom, or so Cupid supposes, Fields might make a match.

• 1999 October 3, Denys Blakeway, “Bertie's booster”, in The Guardian‎^[126]:

  He was neurotic, irascible and in moments of stress struck dumb by a terrible stammer.

• 2000 February 13, Marcia Bartusiak, “Quirks and Quarks”, in The Washington Post‎^[127]:

  Between Gell-Mann's undeniable brilliance and his irascible personality, he is the perfect subject for examining the heady, competitive atmosphere of physics over the last few decades.

• 2000 April 9, Guardian Staff, “How gardening saved my life”, in The Guardian‎^[128]:

  My temper veered from irascible to unreasonable.

• 2000 August 29, “Clemons confirms he's the new Argo skip”, in CBC News‎^[129]:

  Clemons replaces the much-maligned John Huard--the irascible antithesis of the enthusiastic and agreeable Clemons.

• 2000 September 30, Simon Hoggart, “Irascible outbursts from the Commons' silent member”, in The Guardian‎^[130]:

  They're a little like modern political sketches, being a series of longish essays about different aspects of Commons life, written not by a hack but by an anonymous and irascible Tory MP who called himself "A Silent Member".

• 2000 October 19, Leader, “Unpicking the lock”, in The Guardian‎^[131]:

  What made him so odd: clumsy; socially maladroit; ugly enough for a woman to whom he proposed to reject him for that alone; wildly irascible; increasingly in later life reclusive and paranoid?

• 2001 March 29, “Wahid asks for understanding, forgiveness”, in CBC News‎^[132]:

  "We have a blind cleric who is irascible, erratic, unpredictable and extremely pig-headed. {...}

• 2001 April 9, John Markoff, “An Internet Critic Who Is Not Shy About Ruffling the Big Names in High Technology”, in The New York Times‎^[133]:

  And even if many in Silicon Valley consider him an irascible gadfly, he has a large, attentive audience.

• 2001 April 13, “Flyers owner calls off Lindros talks with Leafs”, in CBC News‎^[134]:

  Like an irascible would-be father-in-law, Philadelphia Flyers owner Ed Snider has put an end to the courtship between the Toronto Maple Leafs and centre Eric Lindros.

• 2001 May 30, Paul Krugman, “Opinion | Reckonings; Bad Heir Day”, in The New York Times‎^[135]:

  There's a scene in the 1966 British comedy The Wrong Box in which the son of an irascible plutocrat pushes his father's wheelchair along the top of a cliff, responding with a dutiful Yes, father to each outpouring of verbal abuse.

• 2001 June 17, Sunder Katwala, “Paperback of the week”, in The Guardian‎^[136]:

  The fuggy warmth of the Paris cafés offers Halifax a seductive escape from the days dominated by endless sketching for his irascible Russian tutor, Pankratov, a former associate of Picasso and Matisse, who has refused to paint since all of his own work was destroyed by a fire.

• 2001 June 21, Guardian Staff, “$200m Shrek one of biggest animation hits ever”, in The Guardian‎^[137]:

  Voiced by the likes of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz, Shrek tells the tale of an irascible ogre who falls for an enigmatic princess.

• 2001 June 24, “Now that my daughter has moved ...”, in The Washington Post‎^[138]:

  Besides, who isn't intrigued by a creature that speaks, can imitate many natural and everyday sounds -- a slamming door, a dripping faucet -- tends to be curious yet irascible, outlives many human beings and doesn't need to be walked several times a day?

• 2001 August 31, Rick Lyman, “Variety's Editor to Return to Job After Suspension for Remarks”, in The New York Times‎^[139]:

  Peter Bart, the outspoken and irascible editor in chief of Variety, will return to his post on Sept. 10, ending a 21-day suspension that came after derogatory comments about blacks, women and gays were attributed to him in a magazine article.

• 2001 October 7, “In 1891, King Kalakaua of Hawa ...”, in The Washington Post‎^[140]:

  Bierce is a colorful, irascible character (he persists in calling women "the inferior gender"), and for the most part this is an entertaining romp.

• 2001 October 14, Janet Steen, “BOOKS IN BRIEF: NONFICTION”, in The New York Times‎^[141]:

  The Recknagel clan, based in Louisiana and headed by an irascible oilman father, was riddled with alcoholism, mental illness and bitter rivalries.

• 2001 November 15, Douglas Martin, “Albert Hague, 81, a Composer and Actor”, in The New York Times‎^[142]:

  Mr. Hague was perhaps best known for his role in the movie and television series Fame, in which he played the white-bearded, bespectacled, irascible music teacher.

• 2001 December 17, “Barrasso nets weekly NHL award”, in CBC News‎^[143]:

  The most surprising thing about Barrasso's tenure in Carolina is how well the notoriously irascible netminder is being received well by his teammates.

• 2002 January 6, “Washington Is Also Reading...Selling Well in Local Independent Bookstores”, in The Washington Post‎^[144]:

  When an irascible, misogynist professor is murdered at a small New Jersey college, the adminstration calls in a private detective, Estelle Woodhaven, to sort fact from fiction.

• 2002 January 26, Nelson Pressley, “'Rappaport' Revival Is as Good as Old”, in The Washington Post‎^[145]:

  They're an odd couple: Nat (Hirsch, irascible and lovable) is a Marxist rebel looking for a cause.

• 2002 August 29, Paul Howlett, “Pick of the day”, in The Guardian‎^[146]:

  He's a phobically challenged, ultra-fastidious irascible bastard of a writer; she's the waitress at the one restaurant in town that still serves him, and there's a sickly subplot concerning her ailing son.

• 2002 November 14, Angus Phillips, “Playing Hardball With Software King”, in The Washington Post‎^[147]:

  It took only one race for the irascible Dickson to make the next move.

• 2002 December 1, Cullen Murphy, “The Rogues of Academe”, in The Atlantic‎^[148]:

  It cannot have escaped notice in the program's home precincts that Boston University itself has been governed by someone who seems to have become a president-for-life—the authoritarian and irascible John Silber.

• 2003 January 12, Angus Phillips, “Race First, Have Fun Later”, in The Washington Post‎^[149]:

  The last, best hope for the United States in this America's Cup rests with an intense, irascible, 41-year-old New Zealand skipper whose long history in the world's top sailing races includes close misses but never a brass ring.

• 2003 June 3, Jason Deans, “Mail columnist is Weakest Link”, in The Guardian‎^[150]:

  To Daily Mail readers he is "irrepressible, irascible, irreverent" but the litany of adjectives used to showcase his apparently indestructible intellect proved no asset yesterday as Simon Heffer picked up the dunce's hat on the BBC's The Weakest Link.

• 2003 October 6, The New York Times, “Opinion | Courtroom Courtesy”, in The New York Times‎^[151]:

  Public confidence in the judiciary warrants hesitation before filling the bench, let alone the life-tenured federal bench, with the irascible.

• 2003 November 23, Reviewed Howard Frank Mosher, “Scout's Honor”, in The Washington Post‎^[152]:

  It's lively, funny, historically illuminating and, best of all, full of unforgettable individualists, from an irascible English big-game hunter, Lord Berrybender himself, to his headstrong and beautiful daughter, Tasmin.

• 2004 February 23, Peter Marks, “Ever the Twain to Meet”, in The Washington Post‎^[153]:

  If anything, age has been good to the portrayal -- it's added a weather-beaten texture, a vulnerability that gives poignant weight to a raconteur's irascible eye on the world.

• 2004 March 6, Diana Wynne Jones, “The irascible dragon”, in The Guardian‎^[154]:

  There is an episode when Saphira tries to land in a gale and keeps being forced into the air again - which, you feel, is exactly what would happen - and the originality continues in the gradual development of the dragon from a dependent to a sort of bossy elder sister and on into an irascible but loyal friend.

• 2004 June 6, “Lightning force Game 7”, in CBC News‎^[155]:

  After falling 3-2 in Game 6 of this series, the seemingly always-irascible Lightning coach John Tortorella boldly predicted that trend would continue and the Flames wouldn't win the Stanley Cup on their home ice.

• 2004 June 10, Lawrence Van Gelder, “ARTS BRIEFING”, in The New York Times‎^[156]:

  STILL ANIMATED AT 70 -- Donald Duck, as irascible as ever, turned 70 yesterday, the anniversary of his first appearance, on June 9, 1934, in the cartoon The Wise Little Hen.

• 2004 October 14, Matthew Mosk, “Schaefer Assailed Other Democrats”, in The Washington Post‎^[157]:

  Fellow Democrats are livid with William Donald Schaefer, the irascible former Maryland governor who this week decided to broadcast his opinion that people with AIDS are "a danger" and that those suffering from the disease "brought it on themselves."

• 2004 December 14, Cornelia Dean, “Fame, Fortune and Nature, With an Irascible Octopus”, in The New York Times‎^[158]:

  (He sends its irascible protagonist an octopus.)

• 2005 January 16, David Aaronovitch, “Pity the prince”, in The Guardian‎^[159]:

  Unlike, say, the much-loved Lord Redesdale, 'Farve' to the Mitford girls, the irascible but hilarious Uncle Matthew in The Pursuit of Love , anti-semite, member of the Anglo-German Fellowship and the Link.

• 2005 March 17, Paul Schwartzman, “Popular NW Liquor Store Falls Silent”, in The Washington Post‎^[160]:

  He was an irascible, pugnacious Adams Morgan institution, selling merlots and chardonnays as well as pastrami sandwiches and bagels and coffee, which his regulars ate as they read the newspaper and yakked away at a long table he set up near the entrance to the store.

• 2005 May 30, Anthony Tommasini, “Scoundrel? Nay, a Boon Drinking Companion”, in The New York Times‎^[161]:

  LOS ANGELES, May 29 - Portraying the title role of Verdi's "Falstaff," which opened at the Los Angeles Opera on Saturday, the bass-baritone Bryn Terfel is so irascible, nimble on his feet and altogether charming that he almost makes you forget how splendidly he sings the music.

• 2005 June 10, Stephen Hunter, “Dad the Camera Genius: It's Not a Pretty Picture”, in The Washington Post‎^[162]:

  That's the irascible, invincible 83-year-old Haskell Wexler, the legendary cinematographer, barking at his son Mark, who has come to make a film about the old man.

• 2005 June 19, Michael Dirda, “Magazine work, said the irasc ...”, in The Washington Post‎^[163]:

  $45 Magazine work, said the irascible Thomas Carlyle, ranks below street-cleaning as a trade.

• 2005 July 21, John Schwartz, “James Doohan, Actor Who Played Scotty on 'Star Trek,' Dies at 85”, in The New York Times‎^[164]:

  When Captain Kirk said, "Beam me up, Scotty" or its many variants, he was talking to Mr. Doohan's character, an irascible engineer.

• 2005 August 7, Rachel Donadio, “The Irascible Prophet: V. S. Naipaul at Home”, in The New York Times‎^[165]:

  In his interviews as in his life, Naipaul is famously irascible, difficult, contradictory, an ideological lightning rod.

• 2005 August 28, The New York Times, “Opinion | In Fiction's Defense”, in The New York Times‎^[166]:

  I'd hate to think of the geniuses of the past distracted from their celestial rewards, or tormented beyond what the demons have already devised, by V. S. Naipaul's wholesale dismissal of fiction ("The Irascible Prophet: V. S. Naipaul at Home," by Rachel Donadio, Aug. 7).

• 2005 September 21, David Montgomery, “Large Heart Fails 750-Pound Man”, in The Washington Post‎^[167]:

  Charismatic, funny, pugnacious, at times irascible, Keitz used his outsize personality to make friends and partially compensate for his otherwise restricted existence.

• 2005 September 23, “Peter Riegert Rules”, in The Washington Post‎^[168]:

  As he's aged, Riegert has developed an appealing, crusty exterior over his native gentleness, and in "King of the Corner," which he co-wrote and directed, his irascible back-and-forth with Wallach convincingly suggests that Leo is a curmudgeon-in-training.

• 2006 February 4, “Actor who played grandpa of 'The Munsters' dies”, in CBC News‎^[169]:

  In Dracula get-up, he became a pop-culture icon as the irascible father-in-law of Herman Munster, played on the 1964-66 TV show by Fred Gwynne.

• 2006 February 6, Dominic Timms, “1.8m turn up for IT Crowd”, in The Guardian‎^[170]:

  Martin Shaw's penultimate outing as the irascible judge in BBC1's Judge John Deed drew 7.3 million viewers and a 30% audience share between 8.30pm and 10pm.

• 2006 February 7, Guardian Staff, “Bravo to Betty”, in The Guardian‎^[171]:

  Betty Friedan: 'Irascible, truth-telling and fearless'.

• 2006 February 16, “Actor in beer ads faces child porn charges”, in CBC News‎^[172]:

  The actor who portrays the irascible Scotsman in the Alexander Keith's beer ads appeared in a Toronto court Thursday on child pornography charges.

• 2006 March 7, Jonathan Weisman, “Ways and Means Chairman to Step Down”, in The Washington Post‎^[173]:

  Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), the irascible House Ways and Means Committee chairman who helped shepherd through President Bush's biggest domestic policy initiatives, announced yesterday that he will retire at the end of the year.

• 2006 May 7, Marilyn Stasio, “Poison Spring”, in The New York Times‎^[174]:

  Giving himself up to the soft spring air, Commissario Guido Brunetti heads to the island of Murano to investigate death threats the irascible owner of a glass factory has been making against his detested son-in-law — an errand so inconsequential Brunetti considers it playing hooky.

• 2006 May 7, Marilyn Stasio, “Poison Spring”, in The New York Times‎^[175]:

  Giving himself up to the soft spring air, Commissario Guido Brunetti heads to the island of Murano to investigate death threats the irascible owner of a glass factory has been making against his detested son-in-law -- an errand so inconsequential Brunetti considers it playing hooky.

• 2006 September 28, The New York Times, “irascible”, in The New York Times‎^[176]:

  ...Mr. Newman enjoyed personifying the stereotypically irascible New Yorker.

• 2006 November 1, Joseph R. Gregory, “Obituary: P.W. Botha, leader of apartheid-era South Africa”, in The New York Times‎^[177]:

  Botha was a combative, irascible son of a well-to-do Afrikaner farm family who dropped out of college to work for the rightist National Party, then rose through the ranks of the political establishment, gaining a reputation as the "Old Crocodile" for his ability to charm, outwit and crush his opponents.

• 2006 November 17, “An Ode to Greatness”, in The Washington Post‎^[178]:

  As the irascible, extremely annoying old beast makes life hell, the good-hearted, virginal but musically sophisticated Anna keeps him on course, becoming more than a copyist but secretary, maid, social director and almost manager or agent.

• 2006 December 2, Benjamin Genocchio, “Roy Newell, Artist Known for Detailed Geometric Abstracts, Dies at 92”, in The New York Times‎^[179]:

  His market and visibility suffered from his irascible personality and his relentless perfectionism.

• 2007 January 11, Neil Genzlinger, “Review: Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty”, in The New York Times‎^[180]:

  He was almost certainly hoping to create an endearingly irascible and eccentric bunch of rebels, the kind of people Walter Matthau and George Burns and Martha Raye would play in the film version if they were still alive.

• 2007 April 21, Phillip Alder, “Masterly Playing From a Master of the Game”, in The New York Times‎^[181]:

  Roth could be an irascible partner and opponent, but no one doubted his genius for the game and his warmth away from the table.

• 2007 June 3, Rob Weintraub, “Señor Hot Dog”, in The New York Times‎^[182]:

  The talented, sometimes irascible driver has lodged himself in the top half of Nascar's Nextel Cup rankings and, in March, won the Mexico City race in the Busch Series, Nascar's second-highest level, before rankling officials by raising his middle finger to a TV camera in April.

• 2007 November 18, Sylviane Gold, “Life, Liberty and a Musical's Pursuit”, in The New York Times‎^[183]:

  The solemn, undifferentiated founding fathers turn into entertaining individuals, variously sex-starved, irascible, self-serving, foppish or arrogant.

• 2007 December 12, Marc Ambinder, “First Take: The Final Republican Debate”, in The Atlantic‎^[184]:

  "On the issue of transparency, I can't think of a public figure who has led a more transparent life." Fred Thompson was smart, funny, irascible and consistent, and probably helped his standing here.

• 2008 January 6, Ross Douthat, “Romney's Night”, in The Atlantic‎^[185]:

  But all the piling-on from his rivals felt content-free and obnoxious (I thought McCain, especially, seemed irascible and downright unpleasant in his interactions with Romney, and too confident that his role as media darling makes him untouchable), whereas even when I didn't agree with him Mitt sounded serious and persuasive and even wonky - like the thinking conservative's candidate that I once hoped he would be.

• 2008 January 30, Open Thread, “Out of the frying pan ...”, in The Guardian‎^[186]:

  Thailand's new parliament has chosen an irascible TV chef to take over as the country's next prime minister.

• 2008 February 28, Ben Marcus, “'My Unwritten Books': Don't go there”, in The New York Times‎^[187]:

  These essays are not imaginary CliffsNotes; they stand alone and reveal Steiner at his most complex: irascible and passionate, erudite and self-absorbed, determined to engage the most difficult cultural problems.

• 2008 March 21, Vivien Schweitzer, “Falstaff”, in The New York Times‎^[188]:

  Verdi's Falstaff is a figure of fun, an irascible, bloated ruffian full of devious tricks to woo married ladies.

• 2008 May 2, Charles Isherwood, “Endgame”, in The New York Times‎^[189]:

  "Me to play," the first words spoken by the blind and immobile, the irascible and imperious Hamm in Samuel Beckett's "Endgame," can be either threatening or misleading.

• 2008 May 6, Mark Fisher, “Nova Scotia”, in The Guardian‎^[190]:

  The first time we met this irascible artist was as a quick-witted young colour mixer in The Slab Boys, John Byrne's late-70s comedy set in a 1957 carpet factory.

• 2008 July 30, “Inflation champ Zimbabwe lops 10 zeros off currency”, in CBC News‎^[191]:

  Mbeki is acting as mediator in negotiations between Zimbabwe's irascible president, Robert Mugabe, and the main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, who seemed poised to win power in March before a long and controversial vote count went in Mugabe's favour.

• 2008 September 23, Katharine Q. Seelye, “A Scrappy Fighter, McCain Honed His Debating Style in and Out of Politics”, in The New York Times‎^[192]:

  David S. Birdsell, who specializes in political communication and presidential debates at Baruch College, said Mr. McCain could be "irascible and pugnacious and clearly stoked by personal animosity." It will be a challenge for him to keep that side in check, Mr. Birdsell said, especially toward Mr. Obama, who is 25 years Mr. McCain's junior and who Mr. McCain believes has not paid his dues.

• 2008 October 10, The Daily Dish, “One More Time”, in The Atlantic‎^[193]:

  A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget "by the end of my first term." Who, really, believes that?

• 2008 October 13, Clive Crook, “Congratulations to Paul Krugman”, in The Atlantic‎^[194]:

  He can be an irascible fellow.

• 2008 October 14, Oliver Burkeman, “John Cleese on Sarah Palin”, in The Guardian‎^[195]:

  Here's the irascible British national treasure John Cleese, sitting in his back yard in Santa Barbara and being irascible about Sarah Palin.

• 2008 October 24, Jed Lewison, “Dean: Obama "Calm...Thoughtful", McCain "Hot-headed...Irascible" (VIDEO)”, in HuffPost‎^[196]:

  Senator Obama is probably better at leading us through foreign crises than Senator McCain is, Senator McCain is apt to react to things in sort of a hot-headed way, he's a little irascible.

• 2009 August 25, Edward Tenner, “Stanley H. Kaplan's Legacy”, in The Atlantic‎^[197]:

  The Post was not his only suitor and Post publisher Katharine Graham was lukewarm about the purchase; but Post financial executive Dick Simmons was enthusiastic, and Post board member Warren G. Buffett said Kaplan reminded him of Rose Blumkin, an irascible, hard-toiling Russian transplant whose discount Furniture Mart was outselling every furniture store in the country when Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway bought it in 1983.

• 2009 September 12, Neil Genzlinger, “Love, Loss and Singing From Gladys Knight and Mary J. Blige”, in The New York Times‎^[198]:

  For the uninitiated, Mr. Perry, who is neither old nor female, has made a closet industry out of playing an irascible grandmother, a caricature that doesn't help the cause of eliminating black stereotypes but, doggone it, can be hilarious.

• 2009 September 18, Curbed, “Times Square Backlash: The Post's irascible Steve Cuozzo is...”, in HuffPost‎^[199]:

  The Post's irascible Steve Cuozzo is not happy at all with yesterday's 'upgrades' to the Times Square pedestrian plazas.

• 2009 October 8, “Don Cherry to judge on Battle of the Blades”, in CBC News‎^[200]:

  Don Cherry, the irascible star of Coach's Corner on Hockey Night In Canada, will appear as a guest judge on the hit skating show on Sunday and Monday (CBC, 8 p.m.

• 2009 October 28, John Meroney, “A Conversation With Gore Vidal”, in The Atlantic‎^[201]:

  At age 83, Gore Vidal remains a sharp provocateur, as irascible and irreverent as ever.

• 2010 May 17, Stephen Strauss Special To, “Toxicology smackdown: The Paracelsian paradigm versus hormesis”, in CBC News‎^[202]:

  The main contribution to western medical thought of the irascible man we know more simply as Paracelsus was a simple proposition.

• 2010 May 23, Jennifer Schuessler, “Inside the List”, in The New York Times‎^[203]:

  FATHER KNOWS BEST: Last August, Justin Halpern was a 28-year-old semi-employed comedy writer living with his parents in Los Angeles when he decided to start posting his 73-year-old father's irascible, foul-mouthed wisdom on a Twitter feed that we'll call "Stuff My Dad Says." Nine months later, he has more than a million followers, a deal for a sitcom starring William Shatner (tentatively titled "Bleep My Dad Says") and a book at No.

• 2010 June 24, Alex Eichler, “Ben Stiller's Parents Become Talking Heads”, in The Atlantic‎^[204]:

  In recent years, Jerry Stiller has kept busy with roles on The King of Queens and Seinfeld (as George Costanza's irascible father), while Anne Meara has also starred on The King of Queens, Sex and the City, and All My Children.

• 2010 July 6, Elizabeth Roper Marcus, “Fading Father Escapes Mental Fog for a Precious Night”, in The New York Times‎^[205]:

  Day by day, Leo, a humanist, a devoted Central Park South dentist, a lover of opera, golf and political debate, shriveled into a generic old man, irascible and self-absorbed.

• 2010 July 9, Stephen Holden, “YouTube to Big Screen: RV Pitchman With Short Fuse”, in The New York Times‎^[206]:

  He was so irascible during the shoot that crew members edited the outtakes into a four-minute video that became known as "The Angriest Man in the World." After being passed around, it found its way onto YouTube, where, under the name "Winnebago Man," it went viral.

• 2010 July 12, John Hudson, “Remembering 'American Splendor' Author Harvey Pekar”, in The Atlantic‎^[207]:

  The irascible comic book innovator died in his Cleveland home Monday

• 2010 July 26, “Hugh Laurie sings blues on new album”, in CBC News‎^[208]:

  Laurie, a British comedy legend who adopts an American persona as the irascible Dr. House, plays the piano, guitar, drums, harmonica and saxophone.

• 2010 September 21, Caspar Melville, “Beyond New Atheism?”, in The Guardian‎^[209]:

  In the light of this, irascible, rhetorically florid, sweeping, intellectually arrogant New Atheism certainly has its place – some arguments are just asking for it.

• 2010 December 5, Http://www.theguardian.com/profile/eamonnmccabe, “The 10 best photographic portraits”, in The Guardian‎^[210]:

  People have written him off so often but he is still shooting and as irascible as ever.

• 2010 December 5, Alexis C. Madrigal, “How Google News Works”, in The Atlantic‎^[211]:

  We all know that newspaper's frontpages are put together by crusty, irascible, but ultimately lovable editors.

• 2010 December 21, Michiko Kakutani, “Joseph Ellis's 'First Family,' on the Adamses”, in The New York Times‎^[212]:

  For the irascible and highly volatile John, Abigail was a psychological anchor and trusted confidante; for the saucy and independent Abigail, John was a brilliant and courageous visionary who shared her love of books and playful sense of humor.

• 2011 January 7, The New York Times, “Helen Thomas Returns to Journalism, on Smaller Scale”, in The New York Times‎^[213]:

  Ms. Thomas, who became one of the country's most recognizable journalists for her irascible and tenacious presence in the White House briefing room, made her return to journalism on Thursday with a column in The Falls Church News-Press, a weekly paper in a Virginia suburb of Washington.

• 2011 January 17, Alyssa Rosenberg, “'Harry's Law': Kathy Bates, On Television, With a Gun”, in The Atlantic‎^[214]:

  Its charming criminals are irascible old ladies who pull armed robberies and protection racketeers who interpret restraining orders to mean they can tie up domestic abusers and lecture them rather than gay rip-and-runners.

• 2011 January 28, Alessandra Stanley, “Ed Asner and Melissa Peterman in CMT's 'Working Class'”, in The New York Times‎^[215]:

  This 81-year-old actor, who played the irascible but endearing Lou Grant on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," is back on television as Hank Greziak, an irascible but endearing neighbor on a new but creaky sitcom on CMT, "Working Class."

• 2011 January 28, The New York Times, “Opinion | Exit Olbermann”, in The New York Times‎^[216]:

  He came across in his nightly show as a devout liberal, quick to respond to injustice, thoughtful, somewhat (and appealingly) irascible and, above all, civilized.

• 2011 February 21, Brian Merchant, “The Aerotropolis: Will Cities Be Airports?”, in VICE‎^[217]:

  First of all, airports just aren't fun — especially in the US, they're irritating places and filled with never-ending lines, over-priced food, and irascible TSA agents.

• 2011 March 1, Garrett Epps, “TV Lawyer Shows: Blood and Documents Beat Speeches Any Day”, in The Atlantic‎^[218]:

  By turns truculent, irascible, and downright nasty, she punches with an equally unglamorous cast of opposing lawyers.

• 2011 March 14, Garrett Epps, “New Court, Old Doctrine: 'The Thought That We Loathe' Survives”, in The Atlantic‎^[219]:

  At oral argument, the stars of the old generation--calm, deliberative Anthony Kennedy and irascible, preening Antonin Scalia--look and sound like old newsreel footage.

• 2011 March 24, Michael Dirda, “Books: 'The Philosophical Breakfast Club' by Laura Snyder, reviewed by Michael Dirda”, in The Washington Post‎^[220]:

  The cranky, irascible Babbage imagined, then built a small model of what he called a "Difference Engine," and worked out plans for the even more sophisticated "Analytical Engine." In short, as every reader of Victorian steampunk fiction knows, Babbage invented the computer.

• 2011 April 12, “Konyves wins screenwriting award for Barney's Version”, in CBC News‎^[221]:

  Konyves was the fifth screenwriter hired by producer Robert Lantos to breathe life into Barney Panofsky, Richler's irascible hero.

• 2011 April 14, Michael Mcnay, “Hedda Sterne obituary”, in The Guardian‎^[222]:

  A New York Herald Tribune critic dubbed the group the irascible 18, shortened to the irascibles (three of them missed the photo session), because they had written an open letter protesting against the perceived conservatism of the Metropolitan museum.

• 2011 April 26, Alfred Hickling, “The Lady in the Van - review”, in The Guardian‎^[223]:

  For Alan Bennett, it began at the bottom of his drive with a custard yellow van inhabited by an irascible eccentric who refused to budge for 15 years.

• 2011 May 18, Conor Friedersdorf, “Jon Stewart vs. Bill O'Reilly on Common's White House Invitation”, in The Atlantic‎^[224]:

  O'Reilly is his irascible self, bullying his interlocutor and making arguments that don't at all work.

• 2011 June 14, Vice Staff, “Televisionaries!”, in VICE‎^[225]:

  This might be because my dad is an irascible dentist, my mother is Zoe Wanamaker, and I am a precocious ten-year-old, so we found something compelling about its cardboard storylines.

• 2011 July 20, Jack Hamilton, “'Beats Rhymes & Life': A Loving, Unflinching Look at Tribe Called Quest”, in The Atlantic‎^[226]:

  These feelings emanated most basically from the interplay between Q-Tip and Phife, the former cool and serious with a nasal monotone, the latter irascible and mischievous, all gruff exuberance.

• 2011 July 22, Aimee Shalan, “Stalin Ate My Homework by Alexei Sayle – review”, in The Guardian‎^[227]:

  Alexei Sayle, the only son of a genial railway worker and an irascible redhead from a Latvian Jewish family, was born in Liverpool on the day egg rationing came to an end.

• 2011 September 16, Nelson Pressley, “Ted van Griethuysen's actor and poet are enthralling in Studio's 'Habit of Art'”, in The Washington Post‎^[228]:

  It takes a really refined actor to get away with mischief onstage, and at the Studio Theatre Ted van Griethuysen is offering not one but two sly turns — both as the irascible British poet W.H.

• 2011 October 7, Michael Gerson, “What the attack on Grover Norquist didn't address”, in The Washington Post‎^[229]:

  Wolf is known on Capitol Hill for being irascible and morally serious, and both traits were on full display.

• 2011 October 9, Bruce Weber, “Al Davis, Renegade Raider Who Remade Pro Football, Dies at 82”, in The New York Times‎^[230]:

  Al Davis, the irascible owner of the Oakland Raiders whose feuds with the National Football League reshaped professional football over the last half century and helped spur its rise to pre-eminence in the landscape of American sports, died Saturday morning.

• 2011 October 11, J. Hayes Brown, “After Decades of War and Strife, Myanmar is Saying No To China's Colossal $3.6 Billion Dam”, in VICE‎^{"no"-to-the-most-powerful-nation-in-the-world}:

  Look at it this way: if you have an older, bigger sibling with an irascible personality and questionable morals (sorry little sister), you know just how hard it can be to stand up to them.

• 2011 October 23, Ihsan Taylor, “Paperback Row”, in The New York Times‎^[231]:

  In the small coastal community of Rhode Island's South County, economic and social shifts have disrupted the lives of the irascible seaman Dick Pierce and the women (wife, daughter, lover) in his life.

• 2011 October 26, James Parker, “The Anti–James Bond”, in The Atlantic‎^[232]:

  John Hurt as Control, the withered, irascible Circus chief?

• 2011 November 29, Linda Killian, “Even Barney Frank Thinks Congress Is Too Partisan These Days”, in The Atlantic‎^[233]:

  Barney Frank is pugnacious, irascible, and an extremely sharp-tongued partisan warrior who has served as touchstone and poster boy for conservatives to illustrate everything they think is wrong with liberals.

• 2011 December 4, Colin Fleming, “Music Chronicle”, in The New York Times‎^[234]:

  With a pronounced irascible streak to match his heterodox approach to drumming, Papa Jo Jones (1911-85) was an ideal candidate to star in the kind of book that delights jazz fans: the straight-talking, defiantly espousing firsthand record.

• 2012 March 2, “Don Cherry sends out 1st tweet”, in CBC News‎^[235]:

  Don Cherry, the irascible star of Coach's Corner on CBC's Hockey Night In Canada, dove into the social media waters Friday, sending out his first message to his fans one day after joining Twitter.

• 2012 March 6, Kenneth Chang, “Alan Alda's Challenge to Make Science Easier to Understand”, in The New York Times‎^[236]:

  In the 1990s, he led the collaboration that created "QED," a play about the brilliant, irascible, bongo-playing physicist Richard Feynman, with Mr. Alda playing Dr. Feynman.

• 2012 March 23, Neil Rogachevsky, “The High Theater of France's Presidential Election”, in The Atlantic‎^[237]:

  But it has been precisely by returning to his irascible self that Sarkozy has managed to close the gap with François Hollande.

• 2012 March 28, Mark Leyner, “The Genesis of 'The Sugar Frosted Nutsack'”, in VICE‎^[238]:

  It was something relatively mundane that caused Magoo to run afoul of the irascible El Brazo, who sometimes referred to Magoo as Fräulein Luftblase ("Miss Bubble")—a taunting homophobic slur.

• 2012 May 9, Michael Cavna, “SALUTING MAURICE SENDAK: A visual tribute to a rumpus-loving legend”, in The Washington Post‎^[239]:

  SINCE TUESDAY MORNING, when word began to spread that the long influential and always inimitable and sometimes deliciously irascible Maurice Sendak had died that day, at age 83, Comic Riffs has heard from numerous cartoonists and other illustrators and authors who said that they had been inspired by the man's genius.

• 2012 May 15, Scott Meslow, “This Is 'Jeopardy': How a Week of Episodes Gets Filmed in One Day”, in The Atlantic‎^[240]:

  Chris Matthews of Hardball proves to be the real-world equivalent of the irascible Sean Connery in Saturday Night Live's string of Celebrity Jeopardy!

• 2012 June 19, Allen Mcduffee, “Foreign Policy's Twitterati 100: Which think tankers tweet good foreign policy news?”, in The Washington Post‎^[241]:

  •Joshua Foust (@joshuafoust) -- Irascible former intelligence analyst, blogger, and expert on South and Central Asia; unforgiving media critic.

• 2012 July 24, Jack Abramoff, “I Know the Congressional Culture of Corruption”, in The Atlantic‎^[242]:

  Nevertheless, corruption has dulled the luster of the American political experiment and left our citizenry confused and irascible.

• 2012 August 9, Conor Friedersdorf, “Selectively Defending the Constitution at the Claremont Institute”, in The Atlantic‎^[243]:

  Says Kesler of liberalism, it is "hard of hearing, irascible, enamored of past glories, forgetful of mistakes and promises, prone to repeat the same stories over and over--it isn't the youthful voice of tomorrow it once imagined itself to be."

• 2012 August 30, Jennifer Rubin, “Sununu unleashed”, in The Washington Post‎^[244]:

  Former New Hampshire governor and former White House chief of staff John Sununu says: "This may be the last convention, in my opinion." The ever-quotable, irascible Sununu has become a sort of cult figure on the right, a take-no-prisoners critic of the media and a teller of blunt truths.

• 2012 September 30, “CIA welcomed Mulroney in wake of 'negative' Trudeau”, in CBC News‎^[245]:

  The CIA cautiously assessed the "Boy from Baie Comeau" as a more amiable ally than the occasionally irascible Trudeau in a September 1984 memo written three weeks after Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives swept to power, ousting the long-entrenched Liberals.

• 2012 October 26, “Woody Harrelson pushes tree-free paper plan”, in CBC News‎^[246]:

  Actor Woody Harrelson has played every character from a gullible bartender to an irascible porn publisher to the drunken hero in The Hunger Games, but in real life he wants to be a paper industry revolutionary who saves forests from chainsaws.

• 2012 November 30, Jake Simpson, “The NBA Spurs Controversy Is a Controversy Over the Purpose of Sports”, in The Atlantic‎^[247]:

  The drama started when Spurs coach Gregg Popovich—a brilliant, irascible coach who will do whatever it takes to win—decided to sit Duncan, Parker, Ginobili, and Danny Green and let them travel home to San Antonio early.

• 2012 December 6, James Fallows, “If You Are Feeling Jaded About Human Adventuresomeness”, in The Atlantic‎^[248]:

  And -- it's a big day -- the famously tough and irascible Texas Congressman Jack Brooks, who was a much-feared figure in Washington when I first was learning about politics.

• 2013 January 2, Molly Ball, “This Is What Happens When You Cross Chris Christie”, in The Atlantic‎^[249]:

  But what those responsible for stopping the bill may have failed to consider is that some of the Republican Party's noisiest and most irascible figures hail from the Sandy-affected states.

• 2013 January 22, Harvey Araton, “Progress in the N.B.A. Is Calls That Aren't Black or White”, in The New York Times‎^[250]:

  Billy King was at courtside Monday afternoon, having a pregame chat with those irascible former Knicks, Larry Johnson and John Starks, when a reporter approached, note pad open.

• 2013 February 1, Jeffrey Goldberg, “Ed Koch: 'Being Abashed Is a Waste of Time'”, in The Atlantic‎^[251]:

  Ed Koch, the irascible, charismatic, patriotic, grandly flawed ex-mayor of New York, died this morning, at age 88.

• 2013 February 8, Robert Levin, “The Big Question of Charlie Sheen's New Film: What's That Guy's Problem?”, in The Atlantic‎^[252]:

  Pre-warlock Sheen wasn't exactly a poster boy for good behavior, but audiences loved him as the irascible Charlie Harper in Two and a Half Men, not to mention such earlier-career hits as Wall Street and Platoon.

• 2013 February 22, Ian Bogost, “PlayStation 4: A Videogame Console”, in The Atlantic‎^[253]:

  Even the irascible French writer/designer David Cage equated emotional depth with visual resolution, promising that this time the hardware could finally provide it.

• 2013 March 10, Michael Arria, “Why John McCain Got It Wrong About "Wacko Birds"”, in VICE‎^[254]:

  He seems, by all indications, to be getting progressively more irascible as he ages.

• 2013 March 22, Andy Webster, “'Dorfman in Love,' Directed by Bradley Leong”, in The New York Times‎^[255]:

  Among those placing demands are her widowed, irascible father, Burt (Elliott Gould), with whom she lives in the San Fernando Valley; her unhappily married brother, Daniel (Jonathan Chase), who employs her; and her hunky Web journalist friend Jay (Johann Urb), whom she secretly pines for and whose loft she has volunteered to house-sit and decorate while he's away for a week.

• 2013 April 8, Jake Blumgart, “Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, Stealth Tea Partier”, in VICE‎^[256]:

  The famously irascible Chris Christie vetoed same-sex marriage, refused to extend a tax on high-income earners, and denounced New Jersey's landmark affordable-housing court decision, the Mount Laurel doctrine, as "an abomination." (He was elected in 2009, but can be counted among the Tea Party wave.)

• 2013 April 30, Gavin Haynes, “We Should Probably Put Ben Elton On Suicide Watch”, in VICE‎^[257]:

  Regardless, Mr Wright certainly gives a fuck about it, the irascible little fellow that he is.

• 2013 May 7, Richard Conniff, “Maurice Hilleman, M.M.R. Vaccine's Forgotten Hero”, in The New York Times‎^[258]:

  At 1 a.m. on March 21, 1963, an intense, irascible but modest Merck scientist named Maurice R. Hilleman was asleep at his home in the Philadelphia suburb of Lafayette Hill when his 5-year-old daughter, Jeryl Lynn, woke him with a sore throat.

• 2013 May 24, Ben Richmond, “Predicting Volcanic Eruptions Isn't Easy, Especially When Your Funding Is Cut”, in VICE‎^[259]:

  In Sicily, constant monitoring hasn't rendered the irascible Mount Etna predictable.

• 2013 June 20, Janet Maslin, “'The Son,' a Novel by Philipp Meyer”, in The New York Times‎^[260]:

  The family is the McCulloughs; its irascible patriarch, Armstrong, was born in 1811.

• 2013 June 30, Neil Genzlinger, “Regular Guys at Iwo Jima”, in The New York Times‎^[261]:

  But the precedents for this go back a long ways and include "Sands of Iwo Jima," the 1949 saga starring John Wayne as the classic irascible sergeant named Stryker.

• 2013 August 20, Ta-nehisi Coates, “'Tolstoy Is the Tolstoy of the Zulus'”, in The Atlantic‎^[262]:

  But I am realizing, just now as I write this, that the picture shows Tolstoy--who was irascible, absolutely impossible, a judgmental crank and also a wonderful, monumental pain in the ass--lecturing Chekhov about something.

• 2013 September 8, Kady O'malley, “Tony Clement's committee no-show irks NDP's Pat Martin”, in CBC News‎^[263]:

  In a statement delivered in his signature irascible style, the Winnipeg MP devoted every one of his allotted 60 seconds to decrying Treasury Board President Tony Clement's "refusal" to appear before the government operations committee to "defend hundreds of millions of dollars of proposed spending in the supplementary estimates."

• 2013 September 8, “B.C. author W.P. Kinsella ends his own life under assisted-dying legislation”, in CBC News‎^[264]:

  "He was a dedicated storyteller, performer, curmudgeon and irascible and difficult man," her statement said.

• 2013 September 12, Allan Kreda, “Vigneault and Rangers Emphasize 'Clean Slate'”, in The New York Times‎^[265]:

  Switching coasts after seven seasons as coach of the Vancouver Canucks — and essentially swapping spots with his irascible Rangers predecessor John Tortorella — the mild-mannered Vigneault will watch over his first official practice with his team Thursday.

• 2013 October 17, “Ed Lauter, veteran character actor, dies at age 74”, in CBC News‎^[266]:

  Whether he was an irascible authority figure, a brutal thug or a conniving con man, Lauter's presence made him all but impossible to miss in any film he was in.

• 2013 November 17, “Doris Lessing, Nobel prize-winning author, dies at 94”, in CBC News‎^[267]:

  That was typical of the irascible, independent Lessing, who never saved her fire for the page.

• 2013 December 9, Elaine Reese, “What Kids Learn From Hearing Family Stories”, in The Atlantic‎^[268]:

  Fortunately, parents can learn new ways of reading books with their children to engage even the most irascible customer–and to engage themselves.

• 2013 December 20, Ziad Haider, “Murder on the Roof of the World”, in The Atlantic‎^[269]:

  Trees are filled with cherries, apricots, mulberries, and irascible magpies.

• 2014 March 10, “Thomas King wins $25K RBC Taylor Prize for non-fiction”, in CBC News‎^[270]:

  "In this thoughtful, irascible account, and in characteristically tricksterish mode, King presents a provocative alternative version of Canada's heritage narrative." {...}

• 2014 March 12, Kathryn Shattuck, “What's On Wednesday”, in The New York Times‎^[271]:

  10 P.M. (Starz Cinema) PLEASE GIVE (2010) Two Manhattan families collide in this film from Nicole Holofcener, when Kate and Alex (Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt, above), who run a store specializing in furniture acquired from the apartments of the dead, angle to take over the place of their irascible next door neighbor.

• 2014 April 22, Cindy Boren, “Craig Sager touched by Gregg Popovich's heart-warming message”, in The Washington Post‎^[272]:

  Gregg Popovich, the entertainingly irascible coach of the San Antonio Spurs, took a moment during a interview during the team's NBA playoffs game to speak directly to TNT's Craig Sager, the sideline reporter who is missing the postseason as he undergoes treatment for acute myeloid leukemia.

• 2014 May 5, “The Enright Files - Great Canadian Poets”, in CBC News‎^[273]:

  With the Griffin Poetry Prize coming up in a month, The Enright Files reprises three conversations with, and about, some of Canada's greatest poets: a rare conversation with the late Richard Outram, considered by some to be the greatest Canadian poet of his time; award-winning biographer Sandra Djwa on PK Page; and Margaret Atwood talks about the irascible and beloved Al Purdy.

• 2014 May 9, Brian Merchant, “In Which Donald Trump Solves the Nigerian Hostage Crisis on Instagram”, in VICE‎^[274]:

  Does he merely anticipate the cheers of his irascible followers?

• 2014 May 18, Jon Frosch, “The 'Dominique Strauss-Kahn Movie”, in The Atlantic‎^[275]:

  She also doesn't push her themes or the turns in her story too hard, whether it's Gelsomina's desire for the young German delinquent who comes to stay with her family, the growing distance between her and her proud, irascible father (Sam Louwyck), or the shifting agricultural fortunes of rural Europe.

• 2014 August 5, Ed Rogers, “The Insiders: Ted Cruz is burning bridges in Washington. Does it matter?”, in The Washington Post‎^[276]:

  For those of you who don't remember — or who weren't born yet — the irascible Helms served in the Senate from 1973-2003.

• 2014 August 17, Lauren Laverne, “Things That Are Important on the internet And How To Spot Them”, in The Guardian‎^[277]:

  Shouty headlines, irascible newsreaders with wry smiles, women's hobbies… Some things are important, others aren't.

• 2014 August 25, “Ice Bucket Challenge: Don Cherry 'best dressed'”, in CBC News‎^[278]:

  Yes, Don Cherry, the irascible - dare we say, icy (?)

• 2014 September 21, Anthony Hayward, “Angus Lennie obituary”, in The Guardian‎^[279]:

  The actor Angus Lennie, who has died aged 84, found a new audience when he played the irascible, amorous motel chef Shughie McFee in the teatime soap opera Crossroads (1974-81).

• 2014 October 7, Luke O'neil, “Don't Cry for Morrissey's Cancer, He'll Never Really Die”, in VICE‎^[280]:

  It's an emotion that fans of the irascible, often confounding, and perpetually truant singer have gotten used to.

• 2014 October 13, Jeffrey Goldberg, “Lone Geniuses Are Overrated”, in The Atlantic‎^[281]:

  One of the surprising features of Isaacson's latest book, coming, as it does, after his biography of Steve Jobs—who is generally, though not entirely correctly, understood to be the model of the radical (and congenitally irascible) American —is that it is a paean to cooperation, to the idea of force-multiplication through collective effort and, in particular, to the transformative power of the diamond triangle of industry, academia, and government.

• 2014 October 13, Kim Taylor Bennett, “Geek Out: Here's All the Lyrics for 'Tyranny' by Julian Casablancas + the Voidz”, in VICE‎^[282]:

  It's an album that's as fantastical as it is unpredictable, excitably irascible one moment, disconsolate and downcast the next, meanwhile, exactly what Casablancas is saying can, on occasion, be tough to decipher.

• 2014 November 18, Grace Wyler, “Rand Paul's Coming War with the Republican Party”, in VICE‎^[283]:

  The speech didn't go nearly as far as some doves—including some fans of Paul's famously irascible father Ron—would have hoped.

• 2014 December 8, David Sims, “'The Newsroom' Tackles Campus Rape, and the Results Are Horrifying”, in The Atlantic‎^[284]:

  Will McAvoy is the biggest culprit, since the show only ever made him into an irascible, incorrigible genius who knows everything about the news.

• 2014 December 15, Stephen Benedict Dyson, “'The Newsroom' was a fitting coda to 'The West Wing'”, in The Washington Post‎^[285]:

  Irascible by instinct, he had fallen into indolence as the show began, chasing ratings through bland gimmickry.

• 2014 December 23, Katie Kilkenny, “The Trouble With Befriending the Subject of Your Biopic”, in The Atlantic‎^[286]:

  For 1980's Raging Bull, Martin Scorsese employed the real Jake Lamotta as a consultant but ended up portraying him in ways both dark and light—as a graceful fighter in the ring, and an irascible, oafish, table-overturning malcontent at home.

• 2015 January 26, Oscar Rickett, “The Ballad of Emile Heskey”, in VICE‎^[287]:

  When he was younger, the theory was always that he needed to be riled up in some way in order to have the best brought out of him – just poke him with a stick till he gets irascible and then he'll really start banging them in.

• 2015 February 17, David A. Graham, “Why Boris Johnson Is Renouncing His American Citizenship”, in The Atlantic‎^[288]:

  His decision comes not long after the publication of his biography of Winston Churchill, another irascible character whose journey to 10 Downing Street Johnson he would like to emulate.

• 2015 March 16, “Yanis Varoufakis, Greek finance minister, denies giving the finger to Germany”, in CBC News‎^[289]:

  Varoufakis has regularly traded barbs with Germany, especially with his irascible counterpart Wolfgang Schaeuble, since the leftist Syriza party took power in January pledging to end austerity and renegotiate the bailout terms.

• 2015 March 16, Michael Conway, “The Problem With History Classes”, in The Atlantic‎^[290]:

  The curators of his legacy lambasted the film for portraying the 35th president as a prickly antagonist to Martin Luther King Jr., asserting that the film unfairly reduces Johnson to an irascible politician who was forced by King into advancing the Voting Rights Act.

• 2015 April 1, Firmin Debrabander, “How Gun Rights Harm the Rule of Law”, in The Atlantic‎^[291]:

  Or what if the man you argue with, or potentially insult or offend, even unintentionally, is armed and irascible—and the argument escalates?

• 2015 April 27, Jacob Bernstein, “Fashion Pays Tribute to John Fairchild”, in The New York Times‎^[292]:

  John Fairchild, the witty and irascible publisher of WWD, who died in February at 87, was a carnivore through and through.

• 2015 July 6, Lorena Rios, “Cairo's Streets Become Charity Restaurants During Ramadan”, in VICE‎^[293]:

  An irascible schoolteacher sitting next to me in Sayida alternated between cracking jokes and complaining about the service.

• 2015 July 29, Molly Ball, “There's Something About Bernie”, in The Atlantic‎^[294]:

  Sanders has been compared to Trump in the way he appeals to his party's irascible fringe; he's been compared to Ron Paul, the libertarian former congressman and three-time presidential candidate, who drew big crowds of young, digitally savvy activists in 2008 and 2012.

• 2015 July 31, Del Quentin Wilber, “Defying the risks to fight irascible wild fires”, in The Washington Post‎^[295]:

  Wielding chainsaws and a specialized tool called a Pulaski, they engage in hand-to-hand combat with the wildfire, an irascible and erratic foe whose temperature can reach 2,000 degrees.

• 2015 August 11, Meghan Daum, “The Elitist Allure of Joan Didion”, in The Atlantic‎^[296]:

  If Didion and Dunne were in some ways opposites in temperament (he could be irascible and prone to grudges), they shared a class sensibility that Didion found comforting.

• 2015 August 12, Michael Weinreb, “"I Don't Remember Him Ever Being Happy": The Joyless Dominance of Alabama's Nick Saban”, in VICE‎^[297]:

  He doesn't have the irascible ultra-conservative spirit of Hayes or the fatherly soul of Paul "Bear" Bryant, his predecessor at Alabama; he doesn't have the spitting temper of Bo Schembechler or the nerdy visage of Joe Paterno.

• 2015 September 3, Will Partin, “Super Mario: How a Tiny Italian Plumber Became Gaming's Most Iconic Character”, in The Atlantic‎^[298]:

  Recounting the tussle with his colleagues, Arakawa reportedly joked that their irascible landlord bore some resemblance to the protagonist of the company's latest arcade game, Donkey Kong.

• 2015 September 4, Tom Keiser, “Revisiting "The Waterboy," Adam Sandler's Least Bad Football Movie”, in VICE‎^[299]:

  You kinda understand where his irascible Old Ball Coach—Jerry Reed, forever well-cast—is coming from, because Boucher is an insufferable distraction.

• 2015 September 18, David Sims, “'Pawn Sacrifice' and the Quest to Understand Bobby Fischer”, in The Atlantic‎^[300]:

  His Fischer is an irascible pain, in a weirdly charming sort of way.

• 2015 October 14, Dan Roberts, “Bernie Sanders faithful brush off gun control stumble for TV 'revolution'”, in The Guardian‎^[301]:

  Vermont senator's unwillingness to adjust his message in face of attacks from debate rivals offers yet more proof to fans of Sanders' irascible authenticity

• 2015 October 23, Brian Moylan, “Barney Frank: Compared to What misses the man's irascible spirit”, in The Guardian‎^[302]:

  Irascible and unkempt, Frank has, as Rachel Maddow put it upon his retirement in 2013, "a sense of humour he wields like a wrecking ball".

• 2015 November 6, “Brett Wilson offers $100K library donation if Calgary allows Uber”, in CBC News‎^[303]:

  The outspoken Calgary entrepreneur, who has taken up the cause of legalizing Uber in the city as a bit of a personal crusade, announced his unusual potential gift at an awards gala where he was being recognized for his "irascible and cheeky" approach to public life.

• 2016 January 21, David Sims, “Zach Galifianakis Is a Brilliant Sad Clown on 'Baskets'”, in The Atlantic‎^[304]:

  Yes, it stars Zach Galifianakis, master of the vacant annoyed stare on Between Two Ferns, as yet another irascible jerk.

• 2016 January 29, John Robinson, “Friday's best TV: Pierre Boulez at the BBC; The Last Leg Goes Down Under; Music Moguls: Masters of Pop; Spin”, in The Guardian‎^[305]:

  The irascible French composer and conductor had a long relationship with the Beeb, including a stint in the 1970s as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

• 2016 February 4, Vice Staff, “An Iowa Paper Said the Democratic Caucuses Were a 'Debacle'”, in VICE‎^[306]:

  Earlier this week, Hillary Clinton edged out an extremely narrow win over Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Iowa caucuses, a result that nevertheless made it clear that Sanders, an irascible self-described democratic socialist, is a serious contender for president.

• 2016 March 8, David Sims, “Louis C.K.'s Surprise Show 'Horace and Pete' Is a Remarkable Feat of Television”, in The Atlantic‎^[307]:

  He runs it with his brother, Pete (Steve Buscemi), a friendly but melancholy helper who lives in a small room downstairs, and both are continually berated by both their irascible uncle Pete (Alan Alda) and their customers from behind the counter.

• 2016 March 30, John Paul Rollert, “An Ethicist Reads”, in The Atlantic‎^[308]:

  Then he unwisely picked a fight with the mayor of New York, the irascible Ed Koch, over Koch's unwillingness to provide him a $700 million tax abatement.

• 2016 April 3, James Baines, “​The Cult: Georgi Kinkladze”, in VICE‎^[309]:

  Elephant: I'll swallow it, but don't expect people who read football websites to; they're irascible people, pedants too.

• 2016 April 11, Vice Sports Staff, “The Wealdstone Raider Is Back, Raiding Our Hearts Once More”, in VICE‎^[310]:

  Irascible, ill-tempered and imbued with a burning anger of the soul, a pint in one hand and a roll up in the other, the Raider screams freely at the universe – even if he can only articulate the phrases "You've got no fans", and "You want some, I'll give it 'yer".

• 2016 April 18, Anthony Hayward, “David Swift obituary”, in The Guardian‎^[311]:

  Swift revelled in the role of the irascible, vain Henry, a seasoned reporter turned news presenter who wears a toupee and constantly bickers with his fellow anchor, Sally Smedley (played by Victoria Wicks).

• 2016 May 5, Jonathan Ore, “Uncharted 4: A Thief's End is a Hollywood blockbuster in video game form”, in CBC News‎^[312]:

  One YouTube video that tracks the irascible archeologist's body count over four films puts the number at 67.

• 2016 June 15, David Sims, “All Hail the Return of 'Curb Your Enthusiasm'”, in The Atlantic‎^[313]:

  The film broadly spoofed the clashing personalities of an irascible hippie (David) and a polished uber-libertarian (Jon Hamm) as they tried to take credit for the revolutionary vehicle.

• 2016 June 20, Alex Wagner, “Have American Politics Gone Hollywood?”, in The Atlantic‎^[314]:

  Hollywood put these apocalypse-spectaculars in the pipeline back when Donald Trump was still a reality-TV star driven by a preternatural obsession with birth certificates, and Bernie Sanders was an irascible two-term socialist from Vermont with barely a long-shot chance of becoming a household name.

• 2016 June 30, Bliss Perry, “On Keeping the Fourth of July”, in The Atlantic‎^[315]:

  He is willing to be awakened at an unseemly hour, if only for the memory of dewy-wet dawns of long ago, and the imminent deadly breach of the trusty cannon under the windows of irascible old gentlemen, of real battle-flags waving, and perspiring bands pounding out The Star-Spangled Banner, and impassioned orators who twisted the British Lion's tail until it looked like a corkscrew.

• 2016 July 12, David Latham, “The Spew Round 16: Pistols at Dawn and Scooby-Doo endings”, in VICE‎^[316]:

  Yes it's the road raging homunculus, Alistair 'the Irascible' Clarkson, versus the king of the dour hour, Ken 'Mr Catatonic' Hinkley Esq.

• 2016 July 15, Lorena Rios, “Inside the Last Pork Butcher Shop in Istanbul”, in VICE‎^[317]:

  Lazari sat adjacent to my translator, and as our interview progressed, the irascible butcher's movements loosened up.

• 2016 July 22, David Sims, “'Star Trek Beyond' Is the Blockbuster America Needs Right Now”, in The Atlantic‎^[318]:

  Beyond, written by its star Simon Pegg (who plays the irascible engineer Scotty) and Doug Jung, is rarely five minutes from an action scene, but it doesn't get overwhelmed by the endless set-pieces.

• 2016 August 19, Harry Cheadle, “No, Donald Trump Isn't the American Version of Brexit”, in VICE‎^[319]:

  On Thursday morning, Donald Trump, that irascible scamp, decided to take to Twitter, as he so often does, and announced: "They will soon be calling me MR. {...}

• 2016 September 14, Dana Milbank, “Harry Reid's bountiful bile”, in The Washington Post‎^[320]:

  Harry Reid, the irascible top Democrat in the Senate, had shown contrition.

• 2016 September 19, James Hamblin, “Donald Trump Doesn't Understand Food”, in The Atlantic‎^[321]:

  I'll get to that, but to set the scene: Until that point, the best part of the interview was a canned exchange in which Trump revealed that he possessed—in his jacket pocket—a crisp copy of a new doctor's note, from none other than the irascible Harold Bornstein.

• 2016 September 28, Sarah Emerson, “Trump's Campaign Is Trying to Cover Up His Lies About Climate Change”, in VICE‎^[322]:

  Naturally, Trump's campaign tried to refute the evidence plainly laid out by years of irascible tweets.

• 2016 November 4, David Sims, “'The Crown' Is a Sweeping, Sumptuous History Lesson”, in The Atlantic‎^[323]:

  A major plotline through all the episodes is the irascible Philip's distaste at his diminished role in the royal household, and the complex sexual politics Elizabeth had to navigate being a queen first and a wife second.

• 2016 December 20, Jay Ramanee-murphy, “The Cult: Edgar Davids”, in VICE‎^[324]:

  Irascible and outspoken, traits seemingly ingrained in Dutch players, Davids was sent home from Euro '96 after an interview in which he accused Holland manager Guus Hiddink of having his head "up some players' arses".

• 2016 December 23, Mark Hay, “Baby Jesus Was Kind of a Dick”, in VICE‎^[325]:

  Dzon suggests that medieval folk especially may have seen a reflection in these stories of their own view of children: as irascible not-quite-adults.

• 2017 January 31, Will Magee, “The Cult: Tony Stanger”, in VICE‎^[326]:

  They had tough nuts like Mickey Skinner, Paul Rendall and the brilliantly irascible Brian Moore, while the Scotland team was far from a ragtag bunch of working-class heroes.

• 2017 February 3, David Sims, “Robert De Niro's 'The Comedian' Is a Laugh-Free Nightmare”, in The Atlantic‎^[327]:

  Stop me if you've heard this one before: There are some standup comedians out there (many of them irascible men) who dare to talk about their sex lives, their anger issues, and their various inadequacies on stage—often while using a lot of bad language.

• 2017 March 8, Robyn Bahr, “The Ongoing Influence of Darlene Conner”, in VICE‎^[328]:

  Darlene, however, was more than just an irascible heroine of adolescent disaffection: She was also the Conner to root for.

• 2017 March 19, Mark Gibbings-jones, “Sunday's best TV: Vera, SS-GB finale”, in The Guardian‎^[329]:

  Brenda Blethyn's irascible cop returns – as the troubled Nazi-London drama reaches its perilous conclusion

• 2017 March 21, William Grimes, “Colin Dexter, 86, Dies; Creator of Inspector Morse, a Sleuth on Page and Screen”, in The New York Times‎^[330]:

  Colin Dexter, a British mystery writer whose irascible, poetry-loving detective, Chief Inspector Morse, pursued clues and cask-conditioned ale through 13 novels and a popular television series, died on Tuesday at his home in Oxford, England.

• 2017 March 22, David Sims, “Daniel Clowes on Creating 'Wilson' and Translating Him to Screen”, in The Atlantic‎^[331]:

  The legendary cartoonist talks about turning one of his most irascible protagonists into someone who could be the hero of his own film.

• 2017 March 24, The Editors, “The Atlantic's Week in Culture”, in The Atlantic‎^[332]:

  Daniel Clowes on Creating Wilson and Translating Him to Screen—David Sims talks to the legendary cartoonist about turning one of his most irascible protagonists into someone who could be the hero of his own film.

• 2017 March 24, Christopher Orr, “The 'Trainspotting' Sequel Is Unexpectedly Successful”, in The Atlantic‎^[333]:

  The most violent and irascible of Renton's old mates, Begbie has been serving a prison sentence for murder.

• 2017 April 5, Cbc Books, “Life on Mars”, in CBC News‎^[334]:

  A divorced man struggling to rediscover his place in the world hits the road from California to Newfoundland, guided by an irascible talking squid.

• 2017 April 20, Alex Wagner, “How Donald Trump's Success Produced Bill O'Reilly's Downfall”, in The Atlantic‎^[335]:

  The very force that the Fox media empire ushered in—a strain of irascible, combative nativism—may have given rise to a countervailing movement that will ultimately undermine the Murdoch's bottom line.

• 2017 May 4, Ed Yong, “How a Frog Became the First Mainstream Pregnancy Test”, in The Atlantic‎^[336]:

  Hogben was a talented but irascible zoologist with strident left-wing politics and penchant for burning bridges.

• 2017 May 16, Ben Nuckols, “David Letterman to receive Mark Twain Prize for humour”, in CBC News‎^[337]:

  The late-night host's irascible, independent streak inspired fierce loyalty from fans and critics and led to his being honoured with the nation's top prize for humour.

• 2017 May 21, Diana Shi, “A South Korean Artist Paints Positive Faces Over Depressing News”, in VICE‎^[338]:

  Irascible headlines shout constantly, graphic images pollute thoughts; the innately beautiful parts of humanity can be hidden away.

• 2017 May 30, Gavin Haynes, “The Highlights of Last Night's Corbyn V May Showdown”, in VICE‎^[339]:

  He was like a little Scotty dog with a headless pigeon in its teeth, irascible and yappy.

• 2017 June 13, David Sims, “The Marvelous Specificity of 'Oh, Hello' Comes to Netflix”, in The Atlantic‎^[340]:

  Mulaney went to Saturday Night Live as a writer, where he created many more characters with a distinct sort of New York sense of humor to them (including the club kid Stefon and the irascible news correspondent Herb Welch).

• 2017 June 19, Josh Baines, Angus Harrison, “Fifty Things That Have Happened Since Fedde Le Grand Released "Put Your Hands Up For Detroit"”, in VICE‎^[341]:

  18) A country grew to love Len Goodman, an irascible, grumpy old man who prior to a TV series in which he was whisked to various restaurants by Ainsley Harriott, refused to eat foreign muck.

• 2017 June 30, Katy Guest, “Rebus at 30: Edinburgh celebrates”, in The Guardian‎^[342]:

  RebusFest is taking place at venues around the city, dedicated to "the many facets of the irascible old rogue", according to the publisher.

• 2017 July 11, Cbc Books, “Cornered”, in CBC News‎^[343]:

  He has interviewed the greatest players, coaches and personalities of an era and is a master at coaxing the best in substance and entertainment from his guests, as well as from his opinionated and often irascible co-host, Don Cherry, on Coach's Corner.

• 2017 July 12, Mark Galeotti, “What Exactly Are 'Kremlin Ties'?”, in The Atlantic‎^[344]:

  So, despite his years of service and undoubted, if irascible competence, his influence on foreign policy is, in fact, negligible.

• 2017 August 3, Staff Reports, “harry potter actor robert hardy is dead”, in The Washington Post‎^[345]:

  Robert Hardy, a veteran British stage and screen actor who played Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge in the "Harry Potter" movies and was the irascible veterinarian Siegfried Farnon in the long-running TV series "All Creatures Great and Small," died Aug. 3 in London.

• 2017 August 6, Jesse Mckinley, “Amid Talk of a 2020 Run, Cuomo Must First Deal With 2018”, in The New York Times‎^[346]:

  2 Republican in the State Senate, John DeFrancisco, an irascible straight shooter from the Syracuse area, said he was exploring a run.

• 2017 August 14, Scott Beauchamp, “'Beast' Celebrates a Man's Abrupt Return to Nature”, in The Atlantic‎^[347]:

  With his old life destroyed, he takes to the woods, becoming something of a dark, irascible, half-insane Robin Hood.

• 2017 August 19, Lucy Mangan, “Professor T review – Belgian crime thriller gets lost in translation”, in The Guardian‎^[348]:

  Professor Jasper Teerlinck – irascible, brilliant and no fan of Ricky Gervais

• 2017 August 20, David Sims, “Remembering Jerry Lewis”, in The Atlantic‎^[349]:

  He sold out shows at the age of 90, and never lost grip of his specific, irascible sense of humor (as evidenced by this marvelously uncomfortable interview he gave The Hollywood Reporter last December).

• 2017 September 14, Tori Latham, “A Novel That Imagines a World Without Bees”, in The Atlantic‎^[350]:

  If most of Tao's storyline follows her attempts to discover her missing son, George's and William's more closely trace their irascible connections with their children.

• 2017 October 18, Ben Umanov, “Beavis and Butt-Head Spoke for a Generation of Metalheads”, in VICE‎^[351]:

  Their members were irascible boozers and partiers from the dirty, hard-scrabble South who just happened to be good at their instruments.

• 2017 November 23, Michele Cooperberg, “The Cranky Fishmonger”, in The New York Times‎^[352]:

  And the only one behind the counter was the irascible proprietor, Mr. Newman.

• 2017 December 8, The New York Times, “Letters to the Editor”, in The New York Times‎^[353]:

  Elissa Schappell, reviewing "This Is the Place" (Nov. 26), a book about home, quotes the line "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in" from Robert Frost's "The Death of the Hired Man" as if that were somehow Frost's point, also calling Frost "irascible." But that line is spoken by a character inside the poem, and Schappell doesn't cite the other character's balancing line: "I should have called it / Something you somehow haven't to deserve."

• 2017 December 15, Ian Bogost, “Net Neutrality Was Never Enough”, in The Atlantic‎^[354]:

  Nobody wants to think about the complicated, messy infrastructure that actually makes it possible for irascible tweets to make it from the phones in people's hands to the servers on which they are stored.

• 2018 January 10, David Sims, “'Paddington 2' Is Children's Entertainment at Its Finest”, in The Atlantic‎^[355]:

  Brendan Gleeson is the real secret weapon in Paddington 2's Swiss Army knife of character actors, playing an irascible prison chef named Knuckles who bonds with Paddington over their shared love of marmalade sandwiches.

• 2018 January 25, Daniel Dylan Wray, “Remembering My Drunken Afternoons with Mark E Smith”, in VICE‎^[356]:

  Knowing his irascible nature around some journalists – the time he tried to stub a lit cigarette out on the face of a Loaded writer was particularly clear in my mind – I arrived mildly anxious 30 minutes early, to grab a table and a drink to help me mentally prepare.

• 2018 March 2, Greg Jaffe, Josh Dawsey, “Trump and McMaster have seemed anxious to part but so far remain together”, in The Washington Post‎^[357]:

  President Trump has often seemed eager to move on from the Army three-star general, who has struggled to bond with his irascible boss.

• 2018 March 20, Paula Fass, “There Used to Be Consensus on How to Raise Kids”, in The Atlantic‎^[358]:

  The internet magnifies the intense battles of America's currently irascible culture, while it proffers unvetted sources of conflicting information.

• 2018 March 24, Sophie Gilbert, “'Trust' Is a Stylish, Hollow Spectacle”, in The Atlantic‎^[359]:

  The most promising episode of the three made available for review is the first, which focuses on the House of Getty, led by an irascible, miserly, priapic oil baron (Donald Sutherland) who lives in a stately home outside London with his official girlfriend (Anna Chancellor) and a harem of unofficial women she describes as "decoration." John Paul Getty's son George has recently killed himself in an amphetamine-fueled incident involving a barbecue fork, leading Getty Sr. to ponder, Lear-like, which one of his feckless heirs deserves the keys to his kingdom.

• 2018 June 27, “A Perfect Pledge”, in CBC News‎^[360]:

  Geevan, known universally as Jeeves, is the son that Narpat, an irascible cane farmer, has long wished for to add to his three daughters.

• 2018 August 17, Sophie Gilbert, “'Disenchantment' Subverts the Cartoon Fairy Tale”, in The Atlantic‎^[361]:

  In the first episode, Bean is due to marry a prince from a neighboring land in a diplomatic exercise engineered by her father, the slovenly and irascible King Zog (Futurama's John DiMaggio).

• 2018 August 26, Vice News, “John McCain dead at 81”, in VICE‎^[362]:

  McCain's entire public persona was a kind of paradox: at once the Senate's most irascible member, and its funniest.

• 2018 November 2, Rachel Aroesti, “Marianne Faithfull: Negative Capability review – staggering meditation on ageing and death”, in The Guardian‎^[363]:

  On her 21st album, Negative Capability, she imbues the twee melody with both a wobbly vulnerability and irascible strength, her craggy voice lingering over the stately instrumentation.

• 2019 February 1, Charlotte Gordon, “'All the Lives We Ever Lived,' by Katharine Smyth book review”, in The Washington Post‎^[364]:

  Smyth sets out to understand the irascible, irreverent, effervescent spirit of her architect father, who died after a long grim fight with cancer and alcoholism.

• 2019 February 14, Alexis C. Madrigal, “Amazon's Retreat and the New Politics of Tech”, in The Atlantic‎^[365]:

  San Francisco now serves as a metaphor for how tech money can transform even one of the most charming and irascible cities into a place where no teachers can afford to live, even young rich people are terrified of losing their apartments, and longtime residents mutter under their breath as they wander through suddenly alien streets.

• 2019 May 17, Erin Blakemore, “Living longer doesn't mean living better”, in The Washington Post‎^[366]:

  "The most effective way of comforting the aged, the researchers there find," he writes, "is through a kind of comical convergence of products designed by and supposedly for impatient millennials, which secretly better suit the needs of irascible boomers."

• 2019 May 19, Tim Lewis, “John McEnroe in his prime and at his most irascible makes fascinating viewing”, in The Guardian‎^[367]:

  Well, we find the Superbrat at his most irascible, for one thing.

• 2019 June 10, David Sims, “The 'Last Black Man in San Francisco' Is an Elegy for a City”, in The Atlantic‎^[368]:

  There are Montgomery's grandfather (Danny Glover), Jimmie's sister Wanda (Tichina Arnold), and Jimmie's irascible father James (Rob Morgan), who angrily tries to dismiss his son's rose-tinted memories of his childhood in the city.

• 2019 August 26, The Editorial Board, “Opinion | Group of 7, Minus Trump”, in The New York Times‎^[369]:

  The leaders of the major economies tiptoed around the irascible and unpredictable American president.

• 2019 September 18, John Gans, “Robert O'Brien Should Have to Face Senate Confirmation”, in The Atlantic‎^[370]:

  Last week, the president took to Twitter to announce the departure of his irascible national security adviser, John Bolton, who had either quit, been fired, or both.

• 2019 October 2, Rachel Siegel, Thomas Heath, “Dow falls 500 points as Wall Street reels amid recession fears”, in The Washington Post‎^[371]:

  October's history as an irascible month for stocks remained intact in its first two days as markets plunged on fears both real and imagined.

• 2019 October 10, Zing Tsjeng, “Asian-American Film 'Lucky Grandma': Director Sasie Sealy Interview”, in VICE‎^[372]:

  An 86-year-old Tsai Chin – a former 60s Bond Girl and the breakout star of The Joy Luck Club – fully inhabits the role of Grandma, an irascible first-gen immigrant whose days are spent dourly rebuking her Westernised children and shuffling around her tiny Chinatown apartment.

• 2019 October 11, Steve Rukavina, “Judge refuses MUHC plan to move, forcibly medicate 'abusive' 80-year-old patient”, in CBC News‎^[373]:

  A Quebec Superior Court judge has rejected a treatment plan proposed by the McGill University Health Centre for an 80-year-old female patient described by one doctor as "impatient, irritable, irascible, anxious, unpleasant, verbally and physically aggressive, and confrontational."

• 2019 October 30, Hannah Giorgis, “John Witherspoon, Black Hollywood's Wisecracking 'Pops'”, in The Atlantic‎^[374]:

  Throughout the show's four seasons, Witherspoon played the irascible Granddad, the patriarch of the Freemans, a black family that moves into a relatively affluent, mostly white suburb.

• 2019 November 24, Celia Wren, “Comedian Daniel Kitson rants about the joy — and tyranny — of stuff”, in The Washington Post‎^[375]:

  That perspective weaves into a celebration of Kitson's quirkily irascible persona, creating a two-hour monologue that's part rant, part existential musing, part deconstruction of a 50-drawer, library-style card catalogue.

• 2019 December 27, Robert D. Mcfadden, “Don Imus, Radio Host Who Pushed Boundaries, Dies at 79”, in The New York Times‎^[376]:

  On the air, he was an irascible, confrontational growler who led pranks and parodies that could be tasteless, obscene and sometimes racist, sexist or homophobic.

• 2020 January 27, David Frum, “Bernie Can't Win”, in The Atlantic‎^[377]:

  It's a testament to the power of the Sanders approach to politics that it has elevated as irascible and negligible a person as Bernie Sanders to the top of the Democratic pack.

• 2020 January 29, Cameron Joseph, “It's Kind of Amazing How Fast the GOP Turned On Its Former Hero John Bolton”, in VICE‎^[378]:

  {...} called him "irascible."

• 2020 March 9, Aaron Gordon, “Why the US Sucks at Building Public Transit”, in VICE‎^[379]:

  There is, of course, no simple answer why our transportation systems are broken, in much the same way there's no simple answer to why our healthcare system is broken or why our criminal justice system is broken, beyond, as Freemark put it, that our "dysfunctional, irascible political system [is] woefully unprepared to commit to anything particularly significant."

• 2020 March 20, David Sims, “10 Perfect Films to Watch While Stuck at Home”, in The Atlantic‎^[380]:

  Martin Brest's 1988 buddy comedy, starring Robert De Niro as an irascible bounty hunter and Charles Grodin as his curmudgeonly quarry, is, in my opinion, the most watchable film ever made.

• 2020 March 30, Neil Genzlinger, “David Schramm, Blustery Comic Foil in 'Wings,' Dies at 73”, in The New York Times‎^[381]:

  David Schramm, an acclaimed stage and television actor best known for his role as the irascible owner of a small airline on the long-running sitcom "Wings" in the 1990s, died on Saturday at his home in the Bronx.

• 2020 April 3, David Sims, “We're All Larry Davids Now”, in The Atlantic‎^[382]:

  The line between the "Larry David" of Curb Your Enthusiasm and the real writer-actor has long been a blurry one, a distinction David has poked at, most recently in a cheerfully irascible PSA recorded for the California governor's office, urging people to stay home.

• 2020 April 4, Maureen Dowd, “Larry David, Master of His Quarantine”, in The New York Times‎^[383]:

  We are cooped up with no end in sight, getting increasingly irascible.

• 2020 May 7, Cameron Joseph, “'Am I On?' Joe Biden Just Did a Virtual Town Hall From 'Tampa' and It Didn't Go So Well”, in VICE‎^[384]:

  This might all seem silly — and it obviously pales in contrast to the ongoing federal meltdown as the coronavirus kills tens of thousands of Americans, or even to President Trump's irascible and falsehood-filled White House press conferences.

• 2020 May 8, Sarah Zhang, “A Much-Hyped COVID-19 Drug Is Almost Identical to a Black-Market Cat Cure”, in The Atlantic‎^[385]:

  A colleague of his warned me, lovingly, that Pedersen was "irascible," and he was difficult to get on the phone.

• 2020 May 8, David A. Graham, “The First Nomination as Tragedy, the Second as Farce”, in The Atlantic‎^[386]:

  In February, Maguire in turn was nudged out, and Trump replaced him with Ric Grenell, an irascible former John Bolton protégé who had improbably become the ambassador to Germany.

• 2020 May 12, David Sims, “The Sitcom Dad Who Made Grouchiness Into an Art Form”, in The Atlantic‎^[387]:

  The actor Jerry Stiller, who died yesterday at age 92, was unforgettable as the irascible Frank Costanza on Seinfeld.

• 2020 August 14, Marc Stein, “The N.B.A. Bubble Bursts for Gregg Popovich and the Spurs”, in The New York Times‎^[388]:

  But the team's irascible 71-year-old coach indicates he expects to be back next season.

• 2020 October 6, Alexis Soloski, “In Fox Series 'Next,' 'Mad Men' Star John Slattery Gets Madder”, in The New York Times‎^[389]:

  John Slattery stars as an irascible former tech titan in the new Fox drama.

• 2020 October 30, Penelope Green, “Enzo Mari, Industrial Designer Who Kept Things Simple, Dies at 88”, in The New York Times‎^[390]:

  Enzo Mari, an irascible industrial designer, artist and polemicist who made simple, beautiful objects, including toys and traffic bollards, that delighted generations of Italians and design buffs all over the world, died on Oct. 19 at a hospital in Milan.

• 2020 November 8, Hannah Beckerman, “In brief: When the Lights Go Out; The Stubborn Light of Things; Olive, Again – review”, in The Guardian‎^[391]:

  A marital drama driven by the climate crisis from Carys Bray, Melissa Harrison's reflections on nature and the return of Elizabeth's Strout's irascible antiheroine

• 2020 November 12, Simeon Tegel, “A Notorious Rebel Leader Just Got Peru's President Impeached From Prison”, in VICE‎^[392]:

  The violent uprising he led, known as the Andahuaylazo, was inspired by the ideas of "ethnocacerism", a radical nativist ideology thought up by the Humala brothers' father, Isaac, an irascible lawyer and one-time Marxist activist.

• 2021 May 11, Ayana Mathis, “The Story Behind Stacey Abrams's Fiction Career”, in The Atlantic‎^[393]:

  An irascible Supreme Court justice, Howard Wynn, is found unconscious and put on a respirator; Avery Keene, his law clerk and the novel's heroine, follows the baffling trail of clues Wynn left behind to guide her to his enemies.

• 2021 July 25, “Jackie Mason, irascible comedian who perfected amused outrage, dies at 93”, in CBC News‎^[394]:

  The irascible Mason was known for his sharp wit and piercing social commentary, often about being Jewish, men and women and his own inadequacies.

• 2021 July 25, Leila Chatti, “Attention”, in The Atlantic‎^[395]:

  {...} headlines, the top of my feed, trending topics and the occasion for today's irascible flock, injudiciously I devote myself to a grade-school acquaintance's Facebook jeremiad, the entirety of a former paramour's mawkish engagement shoot, cringey katzenjammer of a comments section, and then an insurgence of morning

• 2021 August 29, Ronald Bergan, “Ed Asner obituary”, in The Guardian‎^[396]:

  Ed Asner, who has died aged 91, will always be associated with the irascible but kindly crusading city editor of the Los Angeles Tribune, although he had a career that stretched back to the 1950s and continued long after Lou Grant was axed.

• 2021 September 17, Imani Perry, “She Changed Black Literature Forever. Then She Disappeared.”, in The New York Times‎^[397]:

  I know she is brilliant, obscure, irascible.

• 2021 December 3, “Aparita Bhandari shares 4 cookbooks that will change the way you think about cooking”, in CBC News‎^[398]:

  David Chang, whom a lot of people might know from his restaurants around the world as well as his various appearances on TV, is quite irascible and pure.

• 2021 December 22, David Ignatius, “Opinion | Assessing the Biden administration's foreign policy after year one”, in The Washington Post‎^[399]:

  He was absolutely determined to end America's longest war, and he's a stubborn and sometimes irascible man.

• 2021 December 28, Mark Yarm, “Shane MacGowan Wants a Lot More of Life”, in The New York Times‎^[400]:

  While promoting his 2020 documentary "Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds With Shane MacGowan," the British director Julien Temple frequently spoke of the many difficulties his subject presented during filming, as MacGowan — the famously hard-drinking and irascible former frontman of the Anglo-Irish folk-punk band the Pogues — engaged in conversation with, among others, the actor Johnny Depp and the former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams.

• 2022 January 8, Annie Linskey, “Obama, Biden pay tribute to Harry Reid”, in The Washington Post‎^[401]:

  "Few people have done more for this state and this country than this driven, brilliant, sometimes irascible, deeply good man from Searchlight, Nevada," Obama said.

• 2022 February 26, David Sims, “23 Great Movies the Oscars Couldn't Help but Recognize”, in The Atlantic‎^[402]:

  Another terrific adaptation with a tricky task at hand—translating a comic book into cinema, specifically the independent, autobiographical American Splendor comics written by the famously irascible Harvey Pekar.

• 2022 March 28, Sophie Gilbert, “The Unreality of Will Smith's Oscars Slap”, in The Atlantic‎^[403]:

  "Art imitates life," Will Smith said in his acceptance speech last night after winning the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in King Richard, a movie in which Smith plays a brilliant, irascible patriarch and a savvy showman.

• 2022 April 27, Will Oremus, “What Jack Dorsey gets wrong about Elon Musk and Twitter”, in The Washington Post‎^[404]:

  But for others, working for Musk — a notoriously demanding and at times irascible boss — was a price worth paying for the chance to play a part in a grand, world-changing project that they believed in.

• 2022 October 31, David Brooks, “The Too-Muchness of Bono”, in The Atlantic‎^[405]:

  But his father remained permanently irascible.

• 2022 November 13, Penelope Green, “David Davis, a Force Behind Game-Changing '70s Sitcoms, Dies at 86”, in The New York Times‎^[406]:

  For the entire episode, which introduces the characters, Louie has ruled from his office cage, a high perch in the corner of the taxi garage, a glowering, irascible and larger-than-life figure.