Adjective

(en adjective)

Attended by, or making, a loud and tumultuous noise; boisterous.

* 1809 , , Knickerbocker's History of New York , ch. 7:

[O]n a clear still summer evening you may hear from the battery of New York the obstreperous peals of broad-mouthed laughter of the Dutch negroes at Communipaw.

* 1855 , , "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came":

. . . my hope

Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope

With that obstreperous joy success would bring

* 1918 , , On the Stairs , ch. 3:

He developed an obstreperous baritone . . . and he made himself rather preponderant, whether he happened to know the song or not.

Stubbornly defiant; disobedient; resistant to authority or control, whether in a noisy manner or not.

* 1827 , , The Journal of Sir Walter Scott , October 1827:

[W]e came to Whittingham. Thence to Newcastle, where an obstreperous horse retarded us for an hour at least.

* 1903 , , "A Sandshore Wooing" in Short Stories: 1902-1903 :

My dress was draggled, my hat had slipped back, and the kinks and curls of my obstreperous hair were something awful.

* 1915 , , The Gray Dawn , ch. 70:

They reviled the committee collectively and singly; bragged that they would shoot Coleman, Truett, Durkee, and some others at sight; flourished weapons, and otherwise became so publicly and noisily obstreperous that the committee decided they needed a lesson.

Adjective

(en adjective)

given to or marked by an ill-tempered nature, ill-tempered, cranky, surly, crabby.

* 1839 , Fraser's magazine for town and country, Volume 20, p618

she is a cantankerous old maid fretting and snarling over the loss of her beauty.

* 1866 Every Saturday, Volume 2, p355

The great principle on which the privileges of cantankerous folly and ill-nature found is this: that as we go on through life we grow somewhat cowardly; and if a thing be disagreeable, we just keep out of its way: sometimes by rather shabby expedients.

* 1947 , John Courtenay Trewin, Plays of the year: Volume 47, 195

I am being cantankerous'''. Some days I feel so '''cantankerous I could take a machine-gun into the streets and shoot down the whole population of Hendon Central; I don't know why.

* 1998 , Pauline Chazan, The moral self, 80

By contrast, cantankerous and churlish people are contemptuously independent of others’ opinions, not caring enough about others and their views.

* 2004 , 386 F. 3d 192 - Jacques v. Dimarzio Inc

The cantankerous are those "marked by ill humor, irritability, and determination to disagree." Webster's New International Dictionary 328 (3d ed.1986).

* 2004 , 386 F. 3d 192 - Jacques v. Dimarzio Inc

All things being equal, a cantankerous person or a curmudgeon would be more secure by becoming more unpleasant.

* 2007 , Linda Francis Lee, The Devil in the Junior League, p44

Nina was thrilled, muttering her cantankerous joy that I was getting out of the house.

* from where is this quotation?

The cantankerous landlord always grumbled when asked to fix something.

* 2010 ,

Unfortunately, as Great-Aunt Bert could be a bit cantankerous , they were having to be creative

Note: Cantankerous is generally used to describe an unpleasant elderly person in a slightly pejorative manner. However, the term can be used to people in general, livestock, and machinery as well.