Etymologically
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angry

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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
  • 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