ill-tempered
Britishadjective
Other Word Forms
Explanation
If your mom is ill-tempered, she's cranky, or in a really bad mood. It's probably smarter to ask your cheerful grandma for a ride to school, instead of your ill-tempered mom. Whenever you find yourself in an irritable, grouchy mood, you're ill-tempered. A really good kindergarten teacher will save his ill-tempered remarks for when he goes home after school, and an ill-tempered high school volleyball coach may end up with players quitting the team. Everyone's ill-tempered from time to time — the word combines ill, "bad," and tempered, from temper, or "mood," from the Latin root temperare, "be moderate."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Arguments broke out, the crowd rumbled, and one younger woman suggested that an ill-tempered intruder needed to “dance hrself clean.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 24, 2026
The name comes from a one-minute skit in which a son politely refuses a bowl of gourd soup from his mother but eventually he gets blamed for being ill-tempered.
From BBC ● Jun. 13, 2026
So when Nick Woltemade put Newcastle ahead in the first half of an ill-tempered game, in which Arsenal also had a penalty overturned by VAR, the away fans may have feared the worst.
From BBC ● May 19, 2026
Ruskin’s ill-tempered insistence that drawing is an exercise of virtue was alien to Church’s character, but the same conjunction of extreme naturalism and a sort of vague pantheism is always present.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 1, 2026
But, judging from what Jason had said, those ruins hadn’t held any answers for him - just a bunch of ill-tempered ghouls and ghosts.
From "Blood of Olympus" by Rick Riordan
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