ornery

Meaning

1. (informal) Disagreeable, stubborn, and troublesome to deal with; cantankerous.
2. (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

Hyphenated as

or‧ne‧ry

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”).