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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If you’re grouchy about it, I’m with you on Grouchy Island.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 29, 2026
"Grouchy old guy with the heart of gold," is not a particularly daunting role, but somehow Jones missed the mark.
From Golf Digest • Mar. 29, 2018
He has trained several dogs for the Peoria area including Grouchy, a dog for the Peoria Heights Police Department, and Dark, who works for the Chillicothe Police Department.
From Washington Times • Jun. 5, 2016
Along with Earl Sweatshirt, Wiki could form some kind of subgenre, Grouchy Domestic Surrealism.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 18, 2015
The latter left a few corps at Wavre, his former position, in order to deceive Grouchy, and pushed forward through rain and across a marshy country to Wellington's relief.
From A History of Germany From the Earliest Times to the Present Day by Taylor, Bayard
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.
