Crabbed [adjective]

Many years ago I was very much wounded (but I said nothing) to hear myself spoken of as a churl, an impossible and crabbed man.

She took the paper almost mechanically, and for some moments she studied the crabbed signature before realizing whose it was.

And very keenly and bitterly had she been made to feel during those first few months her dependence upon the crabbed old miller.

Am I sure that I myself have not crabbed my own show a bit in telling the full story of our fight to K. this afternoon?

"Generally crabbed and reticent with strangers, he took a liking to me," says Emma Lazarus.

It is written in a small and crabbed hand unlike that of a professed scribe.

My joints adapted themselves to her crabbed limits, my tastes and habits to her plain domestic economy.

Somehow the succession of sweet, soft names sounded very attractive to the crabbed old man.

Zeb's note was there, his crabbed handwriting reproduced in large, a half-sheet of the newspaper.

He would settle upon the roof above the nest, and chirp in a crabbed, imposed-upon tone until his wife came out.