ornery

Meaning

1. (Appalachia, especially, informal) Disagreeable, stubborn, and troublesome to deal with; cantankerous.
2. (Southern-US, humorous, informal) Troublesome to deal with in a good way; mischievous, prankish, teasing.
3. (obsolete) Ordinary, commonplace; hence, inferior, plain-looking, unpleasant.

Synonyms

cantankerous

crotchety

mean

spiteful

bitchy

cheap

coarse

common

contrary

cross-grained

cussed

dogged

hangdog

ignoble

ill-natured

lewd

low

lowbred

lowdown

low-minded

malicious

mulish

obstinate

raffish

ratty

scurrilous

scurvy

shabby

shoddy

sordid

stubborn

venomous

vile

vulgar

wicked

wilful

beastly

venomed

bullheaded

caddish

cattish

catty

Translations

irascibile

esquiu

patzig

gewöhnlich

launisch

mürrisch

esquívol

schrullenhaft

schrullig

störrisch

streitsüchtig

widerspenstig

zänkisch

aufmüpfig

esquerp

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈɔːnəɹi/

Etymology

A contracted or dialectal pronunciation of ordinary. Sense 3 (“ordinary, commonplace”) was the earliest sense; the meaning of the word then shifted to “inferior, plain-looking, unpleasant”—presumably due to ordinariness—and finally to sense 1 (“disagreeable, stubborn, and troublesome to deal with”).