Are you feeling cranky or irritable and complaining about every little thing that annoys you? You're grouchy. Someone who's grouchy is easily irritated, like the grouchy bus driver who yells for everyone to sit down and be quiet, or your grouchy brother, who grumbles about what's being served for dinner — or the notoriously grouchy Oscar the Grouch from "Sesame Street." Grouchy was college slang in the late 1800s, along with expressions like "to have a grouch on." The root might be grutch, "to complain or find fault with."
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I do my own taxes, so I’m my own grouchy accountant, barking at myself to unearth various forms.
From MarketWatch • Feb. 17, 2026
That Utah rideshare driver, however, was justifiable more grouchy.
From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 30, 2026
The heroine is a grouchy, 73-year-old retired lawyer at odds with her daughter and her garden club.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 8, 2025
Some of you must have been feeling a bit grouchy.
From Seattle Times • May 11, 2024
Mother offered one piece to the grouchy woman in exchange for mailing letters and picking up sundries and news when she went to the village.
From "Between Shades of Gray" by Ruta Sepetys
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
