Ornery
adj, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Disagreeable, stubborn, and troublesome to deal with; cantankerous. Appalachia, especially, informal
"Seemingly here was an intruder who was violating custom. Moreover, the partners had come to look upon this exceedingly rich district as their exclusive property. And so their indignation was extreme. "The low-down, ornery cuss!" said Dobbs. "The nerve of him, crowdin' in on us, just as if there wasn't lots of other places for him to go!""
- 2 Troublesome to deal with in a good way; mischievous, prankish, teasing. US, general, humorous, informal
- 3 Ordinary, commonplace; hence, inferior, plain-looking, unpleasant. obsolete
- 1 having a difficult and contrary disposition wordnet
Example
More examples"Don't be so ornery. Just do what you're told to do."
Etymology
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”).
More for "ornery"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.