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ornery
in a sentence

show 82 more with this conextual meaning
  • Solomon's got it at sundown, and that's the only time of day that big ox is ornery.   (source)
  • An ornery mule could kick just about anything to death in a matter of minutes.   (source)
    ornery = mean-spirited
  • I felt so ornery and low down and mean that I says to myself;  I'll hive that money for them or bust.   (source)
    ornery = easily annoyed and quick to complain and argue
  • And ornery.†   (source)
  • Ornery kites dive-bomb out of spite.†   (source)
  • She's pretty ornery, I think, but she'll be under a lot of pressure tonight.†   (source)
  • But even at their orneriest, consonants were fun.†   (source)
  • You shouldn't be so ornery to people.†   (source)
  • He wasn't a huge shark, but what he lacked in size he made up for in pure orneriness.†   (source)
  • And I hate to say it but Adah is just as ornery and bent on destruction, in her own slowpoke way.†   (source)
  • "We were just being ornery," I say slowly, hoping to avoid alienating my future wife, "but you were on a free ride.†   (source)
  • "She was quite ornery," he says.†   (source)
  • "But this is Nathaniel," she says, reminding me of his humility and the gentle soul that hides behind a sometimes ornery twin.†   (source)
  • Cholly, by his habitual drunkenness and orneriness, provided them both with the material they needed to make their lives tolerable.†   (source)
  • He's that way all through lunch, and at one o'clock he's the first one in his seat for the meeting, his eyes blue and ornery from his place in the corner.†   (source)
  • He lashed out with his wind rope, searching for strongest, most ornery ventus in the storm.†   (source)
  • He had only one horn and one eye, and Po Campo's sewing job was somewhat uneven, the folds of skin having separated in two or three places--but the bull was ornery as ever, bellowing at the cowboys when they came too close.†   (source)
  • ""I promise," Mortenson said, through the knot of grief that had formed in his throat for this ornery old man, this contrarian who had for some reason chosen to fasten his hopes on the unlikeliest of heroes—him.†   (source)
  • But I was nineteen and ornery.†   (source)
  • She was a funny, ornery little thing.†   (source)
  • Amma was our housekeeper, more like my grandmother, except she was smarter and more ornery than my real grandmother.†   (source)
  • No indeed, the world is just as concrete, ornery, vile and sublimely wonderful as before, only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me.†   (source)
  • I called Bill Cooke, our free-lance photographer and my friend, but an ornery man even on his best days.†   (source)
  • But Simeon got very ornery when I said I was heading home, and he refused to give me the money he'd promised for my plane fare.†   (source)
  • Junior spent the next day at home, but he was bored out of his mind and his father was acting ornery, so he figured maybe the next morning he would walk on down to the lumberyard and look for work.†   (source)
  • Pickett moved to the rail fence and sat there and said, "Let me tell you the story of old Tangent, which is Dick Ewell's horse, which as God is my final judge is not only the slowest and orneriest piece of horseflesh in all this here army, but possibly also the slowest horse in this hemisphere, or even in the history of all slow horses.†   (source)
  • That was pride, and it was ornery.†   (source)
  • In the pre-computer age, machines were laid out in long rows, each machine tended constantly by one worker who was considered skilled if he knew the temperament of his one, ornery ward.†   (source)
  • You have to keep the girls well and as happy as possible, and some of them can get pretty ornery.†   (source)
  • It would have been perfect except for that ornery crow calling away: car-car-car.   (source)
    ornery = uncooperative and complaining
  • "I've got me a ornery pony," Soda'd tell him, rubbing his neck.   (source)
    ornery = ill-tempered (and so difficult to control)
  • Mickey Mouse was a dark-gold buckskin, sassy and ornery, not much more than a colt.   (source)
  • I was being particularly ornery. I wouldn't sit down and I wouldn't look at Margaret.   (source)
    ornery = annoyed and uncooperative
  • I apologized for being ornery and for upsetting him.   (source)
    ornery = quick to get annoyed, complain, argue, and be uncooperative
  • Sometimes I am as ornery and stubborn as an old donkey.   (source)
    ornery = annoyed and uncooperative
  • They were not taking us seriously, and I felt my ornery donkey self waking up.   (source)
    ornery = quick to get annoyed, complain, argue, and be uncooperative
  • Gram was released from the hospital the next morning mainly because she was so ornery.   (source)
  •   "I want to tell you something about Margaret," he said.
      "Well, I don't want to hear it." I was feeling so completely ornery.   (source)
    ornery = annoyed and uncooperative
  • Your grandmother was the wildest, most untamed; most ornery and beautiful creature ever to grace this earth.   (source)
    ornery = quick to get annoyed, complain, argue, and be uncooperative
  • She'd had an old grandpa that was full-blooded Cherokee, one of the few that got left behind in Tennessee because he was too old or too ornery to get marched over to Oklahoma.   (source)
    ornery = cranky
  • And Adah of course play-acted at not talking for years and years, merely to be ornery.†   (source)
  • Kites can be lucky or they can be ornery.†   (source)
  • She didn't want to read it, because she knew it would be ornery, and accusatory and judgmental.†   (source)
  • You're too ornery to die, and you know it."†   (source)
  • I guess I could think up something pretty ornery, though, if it came to that.†   (source)
  • Those raccoons were ornery and audacious; I must've shot twenty of them before they finally got the message that they weren't welcome under my house.†   (source)
  • There were a lot of ornery vatos around, but they just hung around and smoked and ditched class and acted like the school was some kind of contaminated nuclear zone.†   (source)
  • Others figure he's letting her relax, then he's going to spring something new on her, something wilder and more ornery than ever.†   (source)
  • Hoerni, whose brilliance was equaled only by his orneryness, jumped jobs every few years, repeatedly butting heads with his business partners.†   (source)
  • "It's too bad Call's ornery about women or we could make you a cook and all the cowhands could fall in love with you.†   (source)
  • It didn't help that Al was an awful patient, ornery at being so confined, short-tempered and demanding.†   (source)
  • The town's police officers seldom bothered the ornery old man, mainly because arresting him would would have left them not only with an unmanned horse and wagon but Bobby himself, and everyone with even a lick of sense knew Bobby would cut you as soon as look at you.†   (source)
  • They all laughed about that when he was around, but when be was off the ward at ET or OT or PT, or when he was in the Nurses' Station getting bawled out about something, matching her fixed plastic smile with his big ornery grin, they weren't exactly laughing.†   (source)
  • "Now you think about it," he said, "how many women I ever went with ever had anything ornery to say about me?†   (source)
  • I was in Washington, D.C., the day before the Pulitzers were announced, to interview the new president of the National Rifle Association, an ornery woman who was a champion black powder shooter and cheerleader sponsor.†   (source)
  • There was Miss Eva and Ciel, and even as ornery as you can get, I've loved you practically all my life."†   (source)
  • " "I guess they're real ornery.†   (source)
  • No way I could have figured she'd pull off an alliance with the orneriest kid north of the equator.†   (source)
  • "She's old an' she's ornery," he said gravely.†   (source)
  • Does feed de ornery varmint!†   (source)
  • She didn't soften things in the poolroom, or put a limit, like a British barmaid or bistro proprietress; here things were too harsh and ornery to be influenced; the clamor and fights and the obscene yelling and banging weren't going to stop, and didn't stop.†   (source)
  • But I wouldn't have read a light meter for gold, I didn't want to capture snakes, and I felt ornery about it all.†   (source)
  • Yuh see de youngun wuz tryin' tuh make it tuh de fence uh Starks' onion patch and de mule wuz dead in behind 'im and gainin' on 'im every jump, when all of a sudden de wind changed and blowed de mule way off his course, him bein' so poor and everything, and before de ornery varmint could tack, de youngun had done got over de fence."†   (source)
  • The other fellow was about thirty, and dressed about as ornery.†   (source)
  • Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot.†   (source)
  • Blame dat man, he worries me wid dem ornery glasses o' his'n; I b'lieve he's a witch.†   (source)
  • En you speck I could see him turned out po' and ornery on de worl' en never care noth'n'†   (source)
  • In de fust place you ain't got none to cle'r, en in de second place yo' ornery eye tole on you.†   (source)
  • She makes me get up just at the same time every morning; she makes me wash, they comb me all to thunder; she won't let me sleep in the woodshed; I got to wear them blamed clothes that just smothers me, Tom; they don't seem to any air git through 'em, somehow; and they're so rotten nice that I can't set down, nor lay down, nor roll around anywher's; I hain't slid on a cellar-door for—well, it 'pears to be years; I got to go to church and sweat and sweat—I hate them ornery sermons!†   (source)
  • The more I studied about this the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and low-down and ornery I got to feeling.†   (source)
  • He said if we warn't prisoners it would be a very different thing, and nobody but a mean, ornery person would steal when he warn't a prisoner.†   (source)
  • So we poked along back home, and I warn't feeling so brash as I was before, but kind of ornery, and humble, and to blame, somehow—though I hadn't done nothing.†   (source)
  • There was empty drygoods boxes under the awnings, and loafers roosting on them all day long, whittling them with their Barlow knives; and chawing tobacco, and gaping and yawning and stretching—a mighty ornery lot.†   (source)
  • I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong to the widow's if he wanted me, though I couldn't make out how he was a-going to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I was so ignorant, and so kind of low-down and ornery.†   (source)
  • But this time I somehow got to talking to him about his wife and young ones; and by and by he says: "What makes me feel so bad dis time 'uz bekase I hear sumpn over yonder on de bank like a whack, er a slam, while ago, en it mine me er de time I treat my little 'Lizabeth so ornery.†   (source)
  • Sudden as winking the ornery old cretur went an to smash, and fell up against the man, and put his chin on his shoulder, and cried down his back, and says: "Alas, alas, our poor brother—gone, and we never got to see him; oh, it's too, too hard!"†   (source)
  • It was pretty ornery preaching—all about brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and preforeordestination, and I don't know what all, that it did seem to me to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.†   (source)
  • Mary Jane she set at the head of the table, with Susan alongside of her, and said how bad the biscuits was, and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried chickens was—and all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to force out compliments; and the people all knowed everything was tiptop, and said so—said "How DO you get biscuits to brown so nice?" and "Where, for the land's sake, DID you get these amaz'n pickles?" and all that kind of humbug talky-talk, just…†   (source)
  • "And he had a little small bull-pup, that to look at him you'd think he warn't worth a cent but to set around and look ornery and lay for a chance to steal something.†   (source)
  • En you ain't got no mo' feelin' den to come en tell me, dat fetched sich a po' lowdown ornery rabbit into de worl'!†   (source)
  • You is de lowdownest orneriest hound dat was ever pup'd into dis worl'—en I's 'sponsible for it!†   (source)
  • Why, before, he looked like the orneriest old rip that ever was; but now, when he'd take off his new white beaver and make a bow and do a smile, he looked that grand and good and pious that you'd say he had walked right out of the ark, and maybe was old Leviticus himself.†   (source)
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