What's the difference between irascible and waspish?

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.

Waspish


Definition:

  • (a.) Resembling a wasp in form; having a slender waist, like a wasp.
  • (a.) Quick to resent a trifling affront; characterized by snappishness; irritable; irascible; petulant; snappish.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It was a waspish summary in which he noted that, while Pope Francis "may have renounced his own infallibility", Margaret Thatcher never did.
  • (2) It was Capote, not Vidal, who came up with the most waspish dismissal of Kerouac's work: "That's not writing, that's typing."
  • (3) His blog continued targeting senior Labour figures, and its waspish attacks got under Labour's skin.
  • (4) The result was a magnificently layered performance, in which Capote's waspish armour of wit came down to reveal an empathetic, vulnerable soul.
  • (5) In person, Wei is straight-laced and intellectually waspish.
  • (6) He conflates the scourge of drugs with everything from lottery winners to Oxbridge graduates who haven't heard of Mr Micawber , and has a hilarious gift for the waspish afterthought, as in: "Teachers are no longer really teachers.
  • (7) This three-parter scrubs up what co-star Mark Gatiss calls Benson’s “sly, funny and waspishly brilliant stories”.
  • (8) The French adoration of comic Jerry Lewis is a legendary, and the country at last got its wish: Lewis has a film at the Cannes film festival for the first time since 1989, and the 87-year-old duly turned up to receive the plaudits, waspishly shouting "[The French] kept me alive for 50 years!"
  • (9) Jane Austen has been confirmed as the next face of the £10 note – but for the quote that will feature on the reverse, the Bank of England is steering clear of her many waspish observations on the subject of money in favour of a line from Pride and Prejudice: "I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!"
  • (10) At the Court, a Beckett diktat sat over his desk: “A theatre stage should have the maximum of verbal presence and the maximum of corporal presence.” To the end of his career, Gaskill was waspish and uncompromising; Callow pictures him as “a slightly frosty Socrates”, relentlessly asking “Why?” Gaskill is survived by a sister, Ruth, two nephews, Nicholas and Martin, and a niece, Gay.
  • (11) From Kenneth Williams to Tom Allen, there has always been a market for effeminate stylings allied to a waspish, holier-than-thou gentility.
  • (12) Pick up Jane Austen and everyone becomes a good target for a certain kind of waspish satire.
  • (13) Ed Howker and Shiv Malik stake out their complaint with a waspishness which comes from personal experience – the struggle to find somewhere to live in London, and to find a secure job.
  • (14) Gray's Butley is a waspish, self-destructive minor academic living in a permanent state of arrested adolescence.
  • (15) Photograph: PA Twitter Gary has 2.37 million followers, and it is here that Lineker's more waspish side is allowed out.
  • (16) Keith Waterhouse , Fleet Street columnist, wit, novelist, playwright and waspish social commentator who once described himself as "a tinroof tabernacle radical", has died at his home in London, aged 80, his family said .
  • (17) In a slot opposite the editorial often used for his waspish profiles, Christopher Stevens blasts the book for covering the star’s cocaine use – yet takes great pains to describe his behaviour in detail.
  • (18) Wenger was angry about the result and he was waspish when questioned about the decision to push Sánchez through the game.
  • (19) Waspishly, Briffa does also suggest however that another climate scientist, Kevin Trenberth, is "extremely defensive and combative when ever criticized about anything because he figures that he is smarter than everyone else and virtually infallible."
  • (20) Gaskell waspishly described her first sight of Charlotte in a letter: "She is underdeveloped, thin and more than half a head shorter than I ... [with] a reddish face, large mouth and many teeth gone; altogether plain."

Words possibly related to "waspish"