What's the difference between irascible and petulant?

Irascible


Definition:

  • (a.) Prone to anger; easily provoked or inflamed to anger; choleric; irritable; as, an irascible man; an irascible temper or mood.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) I learned that the hard way: when I was younger, I played the part of the erratic, irascible drunk in order to have something to write about.
  • (2) All round Europe there have been political earthquakes in a volatile anti-politics age: the surprise is that Britain’s scratchy, irascible electorate hasn’t expressed its underlying anger that ordinary people paid the price for the bankers’ crash.
  • (3) Kaczyński is behaving like Józef Piłsudski, the brilliant but irascible prewar leader who brought Poland back to independence in 1918.
  • (4) The mother is irascible, the father aloof; on the other hand, the parental combination "mother and father affectionate" is more common.
  • (5) The ability to be a good listener, unflappable and patient enough to deal with irascible family members, mediating family spats and calming ruffled feathers also helps.
  • (6) But she's not bad as the partner of an Iraq-bound soldier in Timeless: perhaps a bit plummier than you might expect a squaddie's wife required to live with her irascible great-grandmother in a tiny house to be, but certainly nothing like the disaster the world has come to expect from supermodels demonstrating their polymath abilities.
  • (7) Nancy's novels and Jessica's memoirs offered a beguiling - and friends thought - inaccurate picture of the extraordinary life lived out chez Mitford under the irascible gaze of Lord Redesdale ("Uncle Matthew" in Love in a Cold Climate), celebrated for his dislike of foreigners and his daughters' friends, disparaged collectively as "sewers".
  • (8) In 1959, he starred in Carol Reed's Our Man In Havana, and a year later gave a brilliantly unpleasant Scottish impersonation of an irascible soldier in Tunes Of Glory.
  • (9) Known for his irascibility, the writer has in one sense softened in late middle age.
  • (10) Now the Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman, famous for giving ruthlessly short shrift to politicians, has confirmed that his irascible on-screen attitude towards Westminster is more than skin deep.
  • (11) But his less enthusiastic answer about Bannon comes amid reports of infighting in the Trump White House, all of which place the gruff, irascible Bannon at the center.
  • (12) The clinico-pathological characteristics of the case were as follows: Fibrillary gliosis of the midbrain and pontine reticular formation corresponded clinically to personality changes: The patient had formerly been irascible and became extremely mild-mannered.
  • (13) All good knockabout stuff and the makings of a legend - irascible, menacing, self-important, egoistical.
  • (14) His father was an irascible, blind barrister, the Mortimer of Mortimer on Wills, Probate and Divorce.
  • (15) Yet, if you speak to some at Shirebrook, she seems to portray an image that can be as irascible as charming.
  • (16) Though more conservative in his politics, McAvoy, with his irascible personality and his unfortunate attitude to authority, is thought to be based on the former MSNBC news host Keith Olbermann, who quit the network after a very public falling-out, going then to the upstart Current TV channel, which he left in March this year after another row with the management.
  • (17) Typical Munchausen behaviors such as irascibility, the desperate search for care, and pseudologia fantastica, may be understood as solutions to problems created by brain damage.
  • (18) Wrestling with an opponent who will not recognise the prejudice in a phrase like "hideous Jewish face" had finally pushed Rampton, who cultivates a manner of curmudgeonly irascibility, into a foul mood.
  • (19) What is quickly turning into a public relations nightmare for the irascible Rodman – whose fellow players looked like they would rather be anywhere but Pyongyang during his tetchy pre-game interview with CNN on Tuesday – can only have helped burnish Kim's reputation, at least at home.
  • (20) It was an unexpected flash of humanity from this irascible stickler for social propriety.

Petulant


Definition:

  • (a.) Forward; pert; insolent; wanton.
  • (a.) Capriciously fretful; characterized by ill-natured freakishness; irritable.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "This speaks volumes of Hamilton and his petulant behaviour.
  • (2) One of the stories that took hold about the Klebolds after the shooting was that they were rich, and that Dylan’s violent behaviour was an extreme version of a spoilt child’s petulance.
  • (3) If we’re going to do this groupthink [a blanket ban] I think it would smack of petulance.” Jones added: “I stand by what Tony Abbott said: it [Q&A] is a lefty lynch mob.
  • (4) For a man who can clearly dance, he tends to deliver with a petulant shrug rather than an enthusiastic bang.
  • (5) One expects tension between a government and charities that tell inconvenient truths, but this has become a notoriously fearful, petulant, and intolerant administration.
  • (6) Toby Young called her a "petulant prima donna" in the Telegraph, while Observer critic Robert McCrum wrote that, as "an ebullient and pioneering feminist publisher from the 1970s [it's] hardly a surprise that she should find herself unresponsive to Roth's lifelong subject: the adventures of the ordinary sexual [American] man".
  • (7) His latest show of petulance drew boos from a crowd largely sympathetic to his antics up to that point.
  • (8) Stuart Lancaster and his coaching team sat looking down at the floor when Owen Farrell received a yellow card 10 minutes from the end for an act of petulance that in part explained why England have failed to live up to the high standard set in the pool of death, perhaps in the hope of a sink hole opening up and taking them away.
  • (9) Croatia have won 4-0 due in no small part to the idiocy of Alexandre Song, who was sent off in the first off for a preposterous show of petulance.
  • (10) Goaded, taunted and tormented by the prosecution, Pistorius was perhaps his own worst enemy during cross-examination, suffering surprising memory lapses and appearing evasive, agitated, petulant and self-contradictory.
  • (11) With great power comes great responsibility, so Facebook , and other large technology companies like Google, Amazon and Netflix need to be watched, critiqued and regulated if necessary, just like any other corporation or petulant adolescent.
  • (12) A petulant Henry cursed wretched foreigners and launched his own Brexit by leaving the church of Rome.
  • (13) But that is not possible for as long as Assad remains in power without any timetable for his departure, and for as long as his security forces murder, torture, gas and bomb his own people.” Nigel Dodds, the deputy DUP leader, indicated he was likely to back airstrikes and issued a vicious assault on the Labour leadership, saying: “It’s the petulant, putrid response of the irresponsible revolutionary bedsit they barely seem to have clambered out of.
  • (14) Chris Bryant, the former minister for Europe and chairman of the parliamentary all-party Russia group, said in a statement: "Having visited the trial and seen for myself the farcical way in which it was being conducted, with ludicrous trumped up charges and a petulant martinet of a prosecutor, it is entirely predictable that [Khodorkovsky] has been found guilty."
  • (15) Pakistan authorities counter claim that, emboldened by countrywide instability and foreign support, Baloch feudal leaders have petulantly demanded ever more royalties.
  • (16) They see the protesters as petulant malcontents and repeat Trump’s accusation that some of them are surely getting paid to demonstrate.
  • (17) I give all my customers five stars except Nicholas, whom I give one star out of petulance at his laziness.
  • (18) She was vulnerable, touching, kindly, loving, wholly lacking in malice, occasionally petulant in a good cause, and demonstrated her lack of talent for guile whenever she entered upon some well-intentioned intrigue.
  • (19) Obama has responded with emotions rarely seen during his stoical administration: anger at “hysterical” politicians back home, sorrow at the thought of sending US troops into another Middle East war he fears would be unwinnable, and petulance in the face of those who question his resolve.
  • (20) He not only represents everything a DJ shouldn't be – obnoxious, petulant, unfunny, and so over-fond of his own horrible, squeaky voice that entire half-hours can pass without any music being played – he represents everything that's wrong with this country.