What's the difference between irascible and pugnacious?

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.

Pugnacious


Definition:

  • (a.) Disposed to fight; inclined to fighting; quarrelsome; fighting.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He even has a soft spot for the Cockney Rejects, pugnacious purveyors of football singalongs.
  • (2) He caught sight of Marine Le Pen on a TV politics show in 2007, inveighing against the European Union in the pugnacious style she honed as a lawyer, warning the government to “stop taking the people for fools”.
  • (3) Nel, nicknamed "the pitbull", is diminutive and pugnacious and a sharp contrast to the tall, silver-haired, urbane Roux.
  • (4) The Guardian has found that Trump’s pugnacious campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski , has more experience in this field than was previously known, having resorted to litigation in his only election as a candidate himself.
  • (5) It appeared to be designed as a permanent – and pugnacious – installation, with none of the usual ropes and pulleys.
  • (6) I wouldn’t have gone in.” National security also sparked the standout clash of the night, when Paul, the libertarian who did most in the Senate to end the bulk collection of phone records in the wake of the disclosures from the whistleblower Edward Snowden , collided with Chris Christie, the pugnacious New Jersey governor.
  • (7) On Friday morning, Rahm Emanuel, the brilliantly pugnacious mayor of Chicago, and former White House chief of staff, told me that, as the grandson of a migrant, he would not assist Trump’s attempts to entrap undocumented children, but instead continue to support them through his community college programme.
  • (8) The pugnacious Schulberg rejected this and broke with party discipline, publishing What Makes Sammy Run?
  • (9) McBride, a football-loving and pugnacious former Treasury civil servant drawn into Brown's inner circle, paid yesterday with his career.
  • (10) "Blowing up the Red Road eyesores is a typically pugnacious Glaswegian way of celebrating the Games.
  • (11) Getting out of the third round proved as tough as he suspected for Dimitrov, who needed three hours and 28 minutes to subdue the pugnacious crowd favourite Marcos Baghdatis in five competitive sets in the early-afternoon heat.
  • (12) Montgomerie, who now edits the Times comment section, had suggested that Gove was excessively "pugnacious and confrontational" in his dealings with the teaching profession.
  • (13) Despite Blanco’s refusal, Ramirez announced he was imposing state command over Cuernavaca’s police, and he suggested dark forces were influencing the pugnacious former athlete, who has never before held public office.
  • (14) Rumpole of the Bailey, the pugnacious barrister created by John Mortimer, of course constantly resisted promotion to the bench.
  • (15) He certainly demonstrates a similar steely resolve, pugnaciousness and disdain for consensus politics that was the hallmark of the Iron Lady.
  • (16) The pugnacious Bannon, a former head of the rightwing Bretibart News who has been dubbed “Trump’s Rasputin”, spoke as if on permanent war footing.
  • (17) • China's "newly pugnacious" foreign policy is "losing friends worldwide", the US ambassador to Beijing argued in a cable .
  • (18) Chris Christie , the pugnacious governor of New Jersey who staked his 2016 presidential campaign on a strong showing in the New Hampshire primary, has suspended his candidacy after winning less than 10% of the vote on Tuesday, a campaign staffer confirmed to the Guardian.
  • (19) Erdoğan said voters had opted for stability, but in characteristically pugnacious form in Istanbul, he also attacked the global media and its criticism of him.
  • (20) As charming and as pugnacious as ever, he survived what might have been disgrace and was certainly unpopularity as an active, cheerful and still optimistic man.