What's the difference between cantankerous and crabby?

Cantankerous


Definition:

  • (a.) Perverse; contentious; ugly; malicious.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) While the Spielberg of popular myth is Mr Nice Guy, Lean was known as an obsessive, cantankerous tyrant who didn't much like actors and was only truly happy locked away in the editing suite.
  • (2) He owed his late-flourishing film career to Branagh, appearing in a string of his movies: as Bardolph in Henry V (1989), Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing (1993), the old blind man in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), a cantankerous old thespian in A Midwinter's Tale (1995), Polonius in Hamlet (1996) and Sir Nathaniel in the musical Love's Labour's Lost (2000).
  • (3) Ken could be magnificently cantankerous, but he was generous to a fault and loved nothing more than to inspire young film-makers.
  • (4) Her mother the Duchess of Kent had wanted to call her Georgiana Charlotte Augusta Alexandrina Victoria, but was overruled by a cantankerous Prince Regent, the future George IV, who dictated during the ceremony that she be called Alexandrina Victoria instead in tribute to the Russian Tsar Alexander I.
  • (5) In my cosseted complacency, I had mistakenly believed that modern Scotland was a good place to practise the curious rituals of my cantankerous, old Catholic faith.
  • (6) And what a face it is: that gnarled, acne-pocked, gin-blossomed lunar landscape of ornery venom and intermittent soulfulness, out of which comes that cantankerous Texan bark.
  • (7) The ITV bosshas become more and more cantankerous in his dealings with the media over the past few months as the broadcaster has struggled in the advertising recession and then seen its search for a chief executive or chairman to replace him hit by a series of setbacks.
  • (8) I had spent my life wondering if I would ever find the elderly Jewish actor capable of "doing" the cantankerous, passionate, funny old characters of my early life.
  • (9) No sudden appearances from David Starkey, looming out of the historical gloaming like the ghost of a cantankerous 1930s dinner lady.
  • (10) He was called cantankerous, which he probably took as a badge of honour.
  • (11) Signature video The first Unnecessary Otter skit, introducing us to Hayes playing a sweet children's TV presenter with the aforementioned cantankerous Scottish sidekick.
  • (12) In 1948, the cantankerous but influential scholar FR Leavis crowned Austen mother of his great tradition of the English novel.
  • (13) Think of him as a cantankerous old kung-fu master whose tough love hides a deep-seated desire for his students to prosper.
  • (14) Like Charles Dickens, Twain achieved immense success with his first book, became his nation's most famous and best-loved author, and has remained a national treasure ever since – America's most archetypal writer, an instantly recognisable, white-haired, white-suited, folksy, cantankerous icon.
  • (15) In conversation, he exudes a mix of warmth and cantankerousness, idealism about humanity's potential and a weariness with the modern world – at least outside the eminently sensible shire in which he lives.
  • (16) Godard is the great, implacably cantankerous and difficult warrior from the new wave generation, one that still makes its mark at Cannes.
  • (17) The more cantankerous Senator Ted Cruz called it “Obamacare for the internet”.
  • (18) He’s cantankerous and eccentric but you don’t get to make a difference if you are a shrinking violet.
  • (19) Emerging from the gloom is Robin Griffin (Elisabeth Moss, excellent), a preoccupied, sensitive Sydney detective returning to her hometown to nurse her cantankerous mother, only to find herself drawn into an investigation into the abuse of a pregnant 12-year-old girl.
  • (20) What some saw as an eccentric masterpiece, others dismissed as an eccentric mess – a wilfully obscure meditation on the nature of globalisation from a cantankerous old genius who took a perverse delight in bamboozling his audience.

Crabby


Definition:

  • (a.) Crabbed; difficult, or perplexing.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Hilary Swank plays a resilient, lonely singleton who enlists Jones’s crabby claims jumper to help her escort three mentally ill women back to civilisation.
  • (2) The Crabbie’s Grand National is in a great place and we’re already delighted to be Channel 4’s biggest audience of the year at 8.9m viewers, which is a fantastic figure, but any increase is also good for the sport.
  • (3) Up against a tired, crabby Tory government that enrages natural Labour supporters, Corbyn pulled off something spectacular: he lost council seats.
  • (4) People think I'm crabby having seen the new movie, (1) but I'm not this misanthrope who sits in a dark room, smoking, writing comments under YouTube clips.
  • (5) Agency: Grey London Director: Marcus Söderlund Crabbie's Grand National: "O'Callaghan and Blake" (Starts at 02:59) – UK This big, loud, adrenaline-fuelled trail (appropriately soundtracked by speedpunk band Cerebral Ballzy) offers a representation of the first steeplechase event ever recorded, which apparently came about as a result of a wager in 1752 between two fiery chaps named Cornelius O'Callaghan and Edmund Blake.
  • (6) But set against the backward-facing mindset currently defining so much of politics – from the rise and fall of Donald Trump to the mess of crabby nostalgia that drove a lot of the vote for Brexit – his words seem defiant.
  • (7) John Baker, who runs Aintree as the regional director of the Jockey Club North West, said: “This is a very positive move for the Crabbie’s Grand National and we’re excited about the possibility of showcasing the greatest chase in the world to a wider national and global audience.
  • (8) I’ve shared slightly embarrassed glances with other suspected Pokémon Go players when we’ve all ended up crowded around the same landmark, unloading swag from the PokéStop – but my excitement when a Crabby appeared in the dairy section at the local supermarket was not shared by passing shoppers, who no doubt couldn’t work out why I was enthusiastically “photographing” milk.
  • (9) Fear of being labeled a "hypochondriac," a "nuisance," or a "crabby old woman" inhibits accurate reporting by patients.
  • (10) And so Speer carefully opened the book to the title page, uncapped his heavy gold fountain-pen with the floppy nib, and wrote in blue ink in his peculiarly crabby, vertically squished-up hand: "For Philip Johnson, a fellow architect.
  • (11) In contrast to that bright 1990s vision of a future UK, it is, moreover, an old country, whose dotage is portrayed as a matter of crabby resentment, a place where there is a collective wish to lock all the doors.
  • (12) Though it is a crabby, unacknowledged, unnamed kind of love.
  • (13) Officials at Aintree have confirmed next year’s Crabbie’s Grand National will be run at 5.15pm.