ornery
or·nery
adjective
1.
having a difficult and contrary disposition
- “a cantankerous and venomous-tongued old lady” Dorothy Sayers
Origin
A contracted or dialectal pronunciation of ordinary. Sense 3 (“ordinary, commonplace”) was the earliest sense; the meaning of the word then shifted to “inferior, plain-looking, unpleasant”-presumably due to ordinariness-and finally to sense 1 (“disagreeable, stubborn, and troublesome to deal with”).
WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.