Talk:ornery
In the south there is a significantly different usage of the word ornery. It is used as a synonym for mischievious, and describes good spirited pranksters. The R is also silent in the south.
Tom Sawyer would have been described as ornery.
Unexplained sense shift in etymology[edit]
I came to this article already knowing that "ornery" was a contraction of "ordinary", but I had hoped to find out something about how the sense shifted from "usual, normal" to "stubborn, bad-tempered". But the article gives no sort of hint.
Intuitively it seems that the sense shift must have happened after the sound change, because I don't recall any cases of the uncontracted word ever carrying the "stubborn" sense.
It looks like the original word already had some sense shift, because the article at ordinary does give a couple of deprecatory usages. But that doesn't explain the application to a particular difficult personality trait. ACW (talk) 20:55, 24 September 2022 (UTC)