sulky
Americanadjective
-
sulkier,
comparative
-
sulkiest
superlative
-
marked by or given to sulking; sullen.
- Antonyms:
- good-natured, good-humored
-
gloomy or dull.
sulky weather.
noun
-
sulkies
plural
adjective
-
sullen, withdrawn, or moody, through or as if through resentment
-
dull or dismal
sulky weather
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of sulky
1735–45; akin to Old English solcen- lazy (in solcennes laziness), Frisian (N dial.) sulkig sulky
Explanation
Someone who's sulky is gloomy, or quietly unhappy. A sulky teenager is generally not a lot of fun at a family party. Some people tend to be sulky when they're unhappy or disappointed — when you're sulky, you're not just sad, but you mope and frown and sigh. You might be sulky if your brother gets to travel to England and you don't, or if your coworker gets a promotion instead of you. Sulky probably comes from an Old English word, asolcen, "idle, lazy, or slow," which has a Proto-Germanic root.
Vocabulary lists containing sulky
Emotions on Display
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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
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The Bridge Home
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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.
See Examples For:
This is all so he can coddle his sulky, wild teenage son while expecting Carrie to limit all extracurricular cuddles to her adopted kitty, Shoe.
From Salon ● May 29, 2025
No sniggering jokes now about princely flings and sulky princesses and body doubles.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 24, 2024
Dr. Ash clearly doesn’t take his son’s career seriously, and in just a few days Jed seems to regress to a kind of sulky adolescence.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 4, 2023
She explained that the malnourished horse was not fit for the amount of exertion demanded of him by sulky racers.
From BBC ● Jun. 25, 2023
Anulika was walking ahead of him, unbothered by his sulky slowness, and he hurried up to her, silent, their steps light on the grass where they, as children, had hunted grasshoppers.
From "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Often, Clarence and his neighbors got their workhorses together, attached them to sulkies and trotted them around to see which was fastest.
From New York Times ● Nov. 2, 2011
He drew a second-tier starting position, came from behind a scrambled crush of onrushing sulkies to get clear, then settled down to coast home.
From Time Magazine Archive
A few minutes before the sulkies were brought out, the celebrities all stood around in the darkness of the paddock area in tight little pockets with their friends.
From Time Magazine Archive
At the starting line, farther than the eye could see, a hundred thousand people lined up, on saddle horses, light rigs, buck-boards, spring wagons, sulkies.
From Time Magazine Archive
The buggies, carts, sulkies, and horsemen moving in opposite directions on the long, curving road over the plains grew dim in the distance.
From The Black Opal by Katharine Susannah Prichard
Most of the so-called Musketeers I spoke to came from Twitter, their central battleground, usually after they replied to one of Musk’s sulkier tweets.
From The Verge ● Jun. 26, 2018
The producers first hoped to cast Ryan Gosling, but he would have made Christian sulkier, more brooding, more Heathcliff.
From Time ● Feb. 12, 2015
And he half knew that it wasn't a success and then became sulkier and more awkward than ever.
From "The Horse and His Boy" by C.S. Lewis
Did you ever see a sulkier fire than that?
From Armadale by Wilkie Collins
Johnny was sulkier than ever, but his stomach ached from fasting.
From The Thunder Bird by B. M. Bower
Well, I should say you did," she sighed in mock heroism, "why, you are the crossest, and crankiest and sulkiest patient it was ever a woman's misfortune to nurse.
From Honor Edgeworth Ottawa's Present Tense by [pseud.] Vera
The sulkiest tree that I know is the silver beech.
From Selections from Previous Works and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals by Samuel Butler
A delicious salty air, like the breath of perpetual spring, blew in, tingling the skin of the sulkiest adventurer with delight in this virgin world.
From Heroes of the Middle West The French by Mary Hartwell Catherwood
A stopped clock has the sulkiest face in the world.
From The Extra Day by Algernon Blackwood
Poker’s bosom friend, Dumps, was so named because he had the sulkiest expression of countenance that ever fell to the lot of a dog.
From The World of Ice by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
