angry

angry, irate, indignant, wrathful, wroth, acrimonious, mad

mean feeling or showing strong displeasure or bad temper.

Angry is applied to persons or their moods, acts, looks, or words; it is also applied to animals

{

an angry bull

}

and by extension, because of some of its implications, to things

{

an angry boil

}

{

an angry sky

}

In reference to persons it implies both emotional and physical excitement, usually exhibited as by an inflamed countenance or inflamed words or by threatening looks or speeches

{

the king is angry: see, he bites the lip— Shak.

}

{

the adulteress! What a theme for angry verse!—Cowper

}

Irate is applied only to persons or their looks, acts, or words; it often suggests greater exhibition of feeling than angry and, as a rule, implies loss of self-control

{

the men were getting . . . more irate and violent in their language— Trollope

}

Often it suggests a comic aspect of anger (as from the disparity between the emotion and its exciting cause)

{

refractory children, over whom Mr. Spratt . . . exercised an irate surveillance— George Eliot

}

Indignant, in contrast with irate, suggests righteousness in the anger and sufficiency of provocation. Often its use imputes injustice or indignity to the cause of the anger

{

let the sword speak what the indignant tongue disdains to brand thee with— Shelley

}

Wrathful and the less common wroth are capable of being used where irate or indignant would be more explicit

{

his partner retreated with a wrathful shake of his head— Sassoon

}

However, they usually connote more justification of the anger than irate and more vehemence in its expression than indignant

{

the blurring and the blotching of the later Chinese school . . . provoke his wrathful condemnation— Binyon

}

{

I did not know how greatly they were fools, and this made me wroth— Kipling

}

Wrathful like angry may be extended to things

{

the wrathful thunder of God— Tennyson

}

{

a vagrant shaft of sunlight struck the ocean and turned its surface to wrathful stiver—London

}

Acrimonious, though sometimes still applied to a person’s temper or mood, is chiefly used to characterize intercourse and utterances. It invariably adds to angry the implication of irreconcilable difference of opinion and consequent bitterness of feeling that may be shown in accusations and recriminations

{

the dispute dragged on, becoming progressively more acrimonious, for another eleven years— Huxley

}

Mad (see INSANE) as a close equivalent of angry is used chiefly in informal speech or writing

{

I was so mad the way father was talking— O'Flaherty

}

{

she looked mad for a second but then she began to laugh— Lowry

}

Analogous words: *impassioned, passionate: angered, incensed, enraged, infuriated, maddened (see ANGER vb)