Adjacent Words

Irritable definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

IR'RITABLE, a. [from irritate.] Susceptible of excitement, or of heat and action, as animal bodies.
1. Very susceptible of anger or passion; easily inflamed or exasperated; as an irritable temper.
2. In physiology, susceptible of contraction, in consequence of the appulse of an external body.
In general, there is nothing irritable in the animal body, but the muscular fibers.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: easily irritated or annoyed; "an incorrigibly fractious young man"; "not the least nettlesome of his countrymen" [syn: cranky, fractious, irritable, nettlesome, peevish, peckish, pettish, petulant, scratchy, testy, tetchy, techy]
2: abnormally sensitive to a stimulus
3: capable of responding to stimuli [syn: excitable, irritable]

Merriam Webster's

adjective Date: 1662 capable of being irritated: as a. easily exasperated or excited <gets irritable when he tires> b. responsive to stimuli • irritableness noun • irritably adverb

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. 1 easily annoyed or angered. 2 (of an organ etc.) very sensitive to contact. 3 Biol. responding actively to physical stimulus. Derivatives: irritability n. irritably adv. Etymology: L irritabilis (as IRRITATE)

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Irritable Ir"ri*ta*ble, a. [L. irritabilis: cf. F. irritable. See Irritate.] 1. Capable of being irriated. 2. Very susceptible of anger or passion; easily inflamed or exasperated; as, an irritable temper. Vicious, old, and irritable. --Tennyson. 3. (Physiol.) Endowed with irritability; susceptible of irritation; capable of being excited to action by the application of certain stimuli. 4. (Med.) Susceptible of irritation; unduly sensitive to irritants or stimuli. See Irritation, n., 3. Syn: Excitable; irascible; touchy; fretful; peevish.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

If you are irritable, you are easily annoyed. He had been waiting for over an hour and was beginning to feel irritable. ADJ • irritably 'Why are you whispering?' he asked irritably... ADV: ADV with v • irritability Patients usually suffer from increased irritability.

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. 1. Irascible, fretful, testy, touchy, peevish, pettish, waspish, snappish, choleric, splenetic, captious, petulant, excitable, hot, hasty, peppery, passionate, fiery. 2. Susceptible (to the influence of a stimulus). 3. Excitable, highly susceptible.

Moby Thesaurus

aggressive, agitable, all nerves, allergic, anaphylactic, apprehensive, bad-tempered, bearish, bellicose, belligerent, bickering, bitchy, cankered, cantankerous, choleric, churlish, combative, crabbed, crabby, cranky, cross, cross-grained, crotchety, crusty, cussed, delicate, disagreeable, disputatious, divisive, dyspeptic, edgy, emotional, emotionally unstable, empathetic, empathic, eristic, eruptive, excitable, explosive, factional, factious, fearful, feisty, fractious, fretful, frightened, goosy, grouchy, gruff, high-mettled, high-spirited, high-strung, highly emotional, huffish, huffy, hyperesthetic, hyperpathic, hypersensitive, ill-humored, ill-tempered, impatient, inflammable, irascible, itchy, litigious, mean, mettlesome, moody, nerves on edge, nervous, nervy, on edge, ornery, overrefined, oversensible, oversensitive, overstrung, overtender, panicky, partisan, passible, peevish, perturbable, perverse, pettish, petulant, pindling, polarizing, polemic, prickly, pugnacious, quarrelsome, querulous, raspy, refined, responsive, sensitive, short-tempered, shrewish, skittish, snappish, snappy, spiteful, spleeny, splenetic, startlish, supersensitive, sympathetic, tactful, temperamental, tender, testy, tetchy, thin-skinned, ticklish, touchy, ugly, uneasy, volcanic, waspish, whiny, wrangling