crabby
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
- crabbily adverb
- crabbiness noun
Etymology
Origin of crabby
Explanation
If you're in a really bad or irritable mood, you can say you're crabby. Loud talking and laughing during a movie might make you crabby. Some unpleasant, bad-tempered people seem to be crabby all the time, while others just become crabby when they're stuck in rush hour traffic. You might decide that the sound of kids yelling and laughing makes you too crabby to be a good elementary school teacher. The original, 16th century meaning of crabby was "crooked" or "rough," with the "cranky" meaning arising in the United States around 1776.
Vocabulary lists containing crabby
Rules
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Life As We Knew It
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Al Capone Does My Shirts
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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.
The bots responded to lines of cars and never got crabby, Baartman said.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 16, 2026
“I am such a crabby old man now, but it’s like, there’s parking, you can park when we have to go out,” Richter says.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 27, 2026
He added passengers jokingly pointed out the "shellfish" crab had its feet on the seat, while others called out the crabby commuter for fare dodging.
From BBC • Sep. 19, 2025
“He seemed a little crabby when I was a kid,” Arnold remembered of his grandfather.
From Salon • May 27, 2024
“His long-term memory is still impressive. It’s the short-term memory that is failing him. And he gets crabby sometimes. But all in all, he’s still doing pretty good.”
From "The Line Tender" by Kate Allen
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.
