angry

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈæŋ.ɡri/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English angry, formed from English anger + -y.^[2][3][4][5] The Old Norse adjective was ongrfullr “sorrowful”, and Middle English had angerful “anxious, eager” (mid-13th century).^[2] It is related to anger and anguish.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of things, troublesome, vexatious: about 1360 in the OED^[6] and 1375, in Barbour's Bruce, in Barnhart, where the sense is “vexing, fierce, inflamed”.^[3]

Semantic evolution

“Troubled, vexed” is from 1375, a sense now obsolete.^[6] Of persons, “incensed, resentful, wrathful”, it is from the late 14th century,^[2] about 1385 in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde.^[3][6] Of a wound or sore, “inflamed”, and of anything “looking as if in anger”, it is from 1393.^[6] Angry young man dates to 1941 but was popularized from John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger (1956), though the phrase does not occur in it.^[2][6] The riddle asking for a third English word in -gry besides angry and hungry has no answer, and Richard Lederer traces it to a New York television quiz show of 1975.^[2] In Scots angry meant “inflamed”.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 1360 – troublesome.^[6]
• 1375 – troubled, vexed.^[6][3]
• c. 1385 – feeling anger.^[3]
• 1393 – inflamed, as a sore.^[6]
• 1941 – angry young man.^[2]
• 1956 – popularized by Osborne's play.^[2]

Modern meaning

Adjective

1. Feeling or showing anger; irate.
2. Showing or resulting from anger: angry words.
3. Threatening in appearance: an angry sky.
4. Painfully inflamed: an angry rash.

Word family

• angrily
• angriness
• unangry
• Angry Young Man

Related words

• anger
• anguish
• anxious
• hungry

Usage notes

The American Heritage sets angry beside furious, indignant, irate, ireful, mad and wrathful, which share the meaning “feeling or showing anger”.^[8]

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin