cantankerous

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

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🗓️ 5 July 2025

⏱️ 2 minutes

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Summary

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 5, 2025 is:

cantankerous • \kan-TANK-uh-rus\ • adjective

A cantankerous person is often angry and annoyed, and a cantankerous animal or thing is difficult or irritating to deal with.

// Although the former postman was regarded by some townspeople as a scowling, cantankerous old coot, he was beloved by neighborhood children, to whom he would regularly hand out butterscotch candies from his front stoop with a twinkle in his eye.

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Examples:

“The film ‘Hard Truths,’ which opens in New York on Friday and nationwide in January, centers on [Marianne] Jean-Baptiste’s Pansy, a cantankerous middle-aged woman who spits venom at unsuspecting shop assistants, bald babies, her 20-something son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) and her dentist, among others.” — Simran Hans, The New York Times, 9 Dec. 2024

Did you know?

A person described as cantankerous may find it more difficult than most to turn that frown upside down, while a cantankerous mule/jalopy/etc. is difficult to deal with—it may not turn in your desired direction. It’s been speculated that cantankerous is a product of the obsolete word contack, meaning “contention,” under the influence of a pair of “difficult” words still in use: rancorous and cankerous. Rancorous brings the anger and “bitter deep-seated ill will” (as rancor can be understood to mean), and cankerous brings the perhaps understandable foul mood: a cankerous person suffers from painful sores—that is, cankers.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's the Word of the Day podcast for July 5th.
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0:39.4	Cantankerous is an adjective.
0:41.4	A cantankerous person is often angry and annoyed.
0:44.8	And a cantankerous animal or thing is difficult or irritating to deal with.
0:49.3	Here's the word used in a sentence from the New York Times.
0:52.8	The film Hard Truths, which opens in New York
0:56.0	on Friday and nationwide in January, centers on Marianne Jean-Baptiste's Pansy, the cantankerous
1:02.8	middle-aged woman who spits venom at unsuspecting shop assistants, bald babies, her 20-something son,
1:10.0	Moses, and her dentist, among others.
1:13.4	A person described as cantankerous may find it more difficult than most to turn that frown
1:19.2	upside down, while a cantankerous mule or jalopy is difficult to deal with. It may not turn in
1:26.1	your desired direction. It's been speculated that the word
1:29.4	cantankerous is a product of the obsolete word contact, meaning contention, under the influence of
1:35.6	a pair of difficult words still in use, rancorous and cankerus. Ranker brings the anger and bitter,
1:42.8	deep-seated ill-will, as rancor can be understood to mean,
1:47.6	and cankerous brings the perhaps understandable foul mood, a cankerous person suffers from painful sores, that is, cankers.
1:56.2	With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.
2:03.5	Visit miriamwebster.com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups.

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