Foultempered

Foul-tempered is an adjective describing a person or, less commonly, an animal, who exhibits a persistently irritable, ill-natured, or quick-to-anger mood. The term emphasizes volatility in mood rather than a momentary irritation, and a foul-tempered individual is often described as cantankerous or short-tempered. It carries a pejorative connotation and reflects the speaker’s judgment about another’s temperament rather than an objective classification.

Etymology and usage details: The word fuses the sense of foul (disagreeable or unpleasant) with tempered (mood, temperament). The compound appears in early modern English and is typically hyphenated in modern usage, though historical texts may present it as foultempered without a hyphen. In contemporary writing, foul-tempered is most commonly used to describe people, though in rare cases it may be applied to fictional characters or, less appropriately, to animals with a notably irritable demeanor.

Contexts and nuance: As a evaluative descriptor, foul-tempered is subjective and should be used with caution in formal writing. In more neutral or clinical contexts, alternatives such as ill-tempered or irascible may be preferred. The phrase can be intensified by modifiers (e.g., “remarkably foul-tempered”) or softened when describing a temporary mood, but its strength lies in implying a character trait rather than a transient mood.

See also: ill temper, temper, temperament, irascibility, cantankerous, short-tempered, even-tempered.

References: Definitions and examples can be found in standard English dictionaries that cover ill-tempered and irascible senses, such as the Oxford English Dictionary or Cambridge English.