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
Pamela, as Travers was known around the Disney studio, was grouchy before she granted the rights and grouchy afterwards.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 14, 2025
As grouchy as Rick can be, he doesn’t seem like the type to lie, especially not to Chelsea.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 9, 2025
The grouchy tabby gets another big-screen adaptation, this time following an unexpected reunion with his father.
From New York Times • May 24, 2024
Sykes was a small, thin, grouchy man, had the reputation of a gentleman, though somewhat bad- tempered.
From "The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War" by Michael Shaara
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.
