(a.) Like a churl; rude; cross-grained; ungracious; surly; illiberal; niggardly.
(a.) Wanting pliancy; unmanageable; unyielding; not easily wrought; as, a churlish soil; the churlish and intractable nature of some minerals.
Example Sentences:
(1) And maybe you'll ask how she is, rather than simply responding to her questions with churlish, one-word answers.
(2) Surely it would be churlish now for MPs not to take him at his word, and demand a clear explanation from Starbucks and the other multinationals that, at first glance at least, appear to be gaming Britain's tax system?
(3) Dan Ashworth, David Gill and I have carried out a thorough process in the last three weeks and ultimately we could not look beyond Sam as the ideal candidate.” Allardyce performed a minor miracle to save Sunderland from relegation after succeeding Dick Advocaat last October but, in a terse statement which will interpreted as churlish, the Wearside club failed to reference his contribution, let alone thank him or offer their good wishes.
(4) Magnus Thue, a government adviser, tweeted: “The clown is ousted as chairman.” He later offered an apology in another tweet, claiming it was “churlish”.
(5) Jonathan Ford, chief executive of the Football Association of Wales, said some Ifab members did consider whether an outright ban would be "a little bit churlish".
(6) But right now (and despite those gathering storm-clouds) it seems churlish to argue against her brand of old-school artistic patronage.
(7) I've never celebrated any of the times it has posted record profits, so it does feel a bit churlish to berate it for not making quite as much money this time.
(8) Lewis said it would be "churlish" of Labour to resist Patten's appointment, but while accepting the peer had the "experience and credibility" to do the job, he said his party's support would "be conditional" on the peer meeting a series of tests, including clarifying his business and political interests.
(9) In a post-crash, post-expenses-scandal world, it would be churlish not to recognise that on some issues the Liberal Democrats have hit a nerve.
(10) The corner isn't much of an event, but so good has the entertainment been, it'd be churlish to moan too much.
(11) That is not churlishness or ingratitude, but a mark of the country’s real progress.
(12) His award of a Nobel prize in economics was richly deserved - even if he was churlish in accepting it (he said after winning: "I would not want a professional judgment of my scientific work to be those seven people who selected me for the award").
(13) You'd have to be pretty churlish to pick on one that has raised thousands of pounds for breast cancer care.
(14) For years we've been arguing that Sky makes all this money and it should use it to fund original content, so I think it's cheap and churlish point scoring to ignore them or want them to fail.
(15) Towards the close of our session in the holding cells it seemed churlish for there not to be a little banter with Karadzic.
(16) It seemed churlish to point out that sometimes you really do need to be careful what you wish for or that Newcastle had not proved that hot at strategy in recent years.
(17) It seems churlish to be critical when so many people, for whom Brent Cross must seem as ancient as Canterbury cathedral, will say this is the best place they have ever been.
(18) To criticise a business that has just pumped out profits of £2.5bn on sales of £44.6bn may seem churlish but UK industry data has shown Tesco's underlying growth lagging behind that of peers such as Sainsbury's and Morrisons for several years.
(19) At an ebullient Nick Clegg's side at the agreement's launch, David Cameron reproached the "churlish" media for not giving credit where it was due.
(20) Let's not be churlish when there's much to celebrate.
Serf
Definition:
(v. t.) A servant or slave employed in husbandry, and in some countries attached to the soil and transferred with it, as formerly in Russia.
Example Sentences:
(1) This is bad news for aggregators whose digital serfs cut, paste, compile and mangle abstracts of news stories that real media outlets produce at great expense.
(2) His moment of fame is over and he vanishes into the shadowlands of Britain's serf-labour force.
(3) The Pavlovs, a highly achievement-oriented family descending from a lowly serf, improved their social status by serving the Russian Orthodox Church.
(4) They desired, rather, that it be lived on a higher level than that of a serf, treated as an inconvenience by a moribund oligarchy.
(5) It is the centenary of President Lincoln's inauguration, and of the beginning of the Civil War which ended with the liberation of the American slaves; it is also the centenary of the decree that emancipated the Russian serfs.
(6) At their best, blogs such as Nightjack, or the Civil Serf who revealed life in a Whitehall office before also being exposed, made the public services more open, and improved debate about how they should run.
(7) It is "simply disgusting at a time when people are struggling to heat their homes, these energy barons are treating them like serfs, and the government and the regulator are letting them get away with it," he said.
(8) So, he put his best serfs on it and came up with a birth certificate naming his father, Fred.
(9) The oldest is a 64-year-old who fled civil war only to find herself virtually imprisoned in the UK as an unpaid domestic serf.
(10) This threat is used to justify the absence of a constitution, the destruction of the judicial system, and the implementation of indefinite national service that allows the government to treat each civilian as a modern-day serf for their whole life.
(11) As always, the rich and powerful want to know all they can about us – "the serfs and slaves" as Assange called us – while letting us know as little as possible about them.
(12) The situation in the UK (as in Italy) continues to be insupportable, yet somewhat like "serfs", we've seemed resigned to suffering it, as if no serious alternative existed.
(13) In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill into law which introduced some protections for these imported serfs, under what has become known as the guest-worker program.
(14) Almost all low-paid work is essential: a living wage would stop cheapskate employers scrounging off tax credits and importing what too often looks like serf-labour.
(15) Thirty per cent are labourers, labour tenants, and squatters on white farms and work and live under conditions similar to those of the serfs of the middle ages.
(16) A case could be made that the unhappy family of the opening is the Russian aristocracy in the 1870s, trying to hold the line against excessive change after the grant of freedom to millions of human beings it had owned as slaves, the peasant serfs, in 1861.
(17) But all the baggage of that word (unelected, concentrated power keeping serfs in chains) has no meaning at all applied to Christine Blower, the elected representative of working people whose decisions she can argue for or against but must always reflect.
(18) "Knowledge has always flowed upwards, to bishops and kings not down to serfs and slaves.
(19) That was Charles – impatient, controlling but also thoughtful towards his serfs.
(20) Back then Wimbledon felt like – in fact prided itself on being – a leftover from some ancien regime, with the players toiling and serfing on the lawns of a feudal estate.