fractious
Part of speech: adj
Morphological type: derivation
Etymology: From fraction (“discord”) (now obsolete) + -ous.
Base: fraction
Affixes: -ous
Inflected forms:
form: more fractious
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most fractious
pos: adj
tags: superlative
Senses:
gloss: Given to troublemaking.
pos: adj
examples: 1835 James Kirke Paulding: The Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan
Now when the fractious little Beau Napperty heard that Bull had sent over his tenantry to commit trespass upon his marshes, he fell into one of the greatest passions ever known, and swore that Parson Fred should rue the hour he came over into his pastures.
gloss: Irritable; argumentative; quarrelsome.
pos: adj
examples: 1841 Western Farmer and Gardener, Devoted to Agriculture, Horticulture, and Rural Economy. Ed. Thomas Affleck. vol. II. Oct. 1840 to Sept. 1841.
Fractious boys should be taught to govern their own tempers before they have the full control of oxen; and fractious men should remember that he who controls his own spirit is mightier than many who govern whole cities.
[…] to him, in his present fractious mood, she dared whisper no observations, nor ask of him any information.
That brief moment after the election four years ago, when many Americans thought Mr. Obama’s election would presage a new, less fractious political era, now seems very much a thing of the past.
Flair and invention were very much at a premium, suffocated by the relentless pace and often fractious nature of proceedings. The absence of James Morrison from the centre of Scotland’s midfield, the West Brom man ruled out on the morning of the game by illness, had already diminished the creative capacity of the home side in that department.
COP stands for conference of the parties under the UNFCCC, and the annual meetings have swung between fractious and soporific, interspersed with moments of high drama and the occasional triumph (the Paris agreement in 2015) and disaster (Copenhagen in 2009).
With his twin notes, Mr. Musk waded directly into a fractious debate over the right way for corporations to bring workers back to the office during the coronavirus pandemic.
After a fractious party conference and dire opinion polls for the Tories, the prime minister attempted to speak directly to the public, saying: “I want what you want.”
German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s fractious centre-left coalition has received a sharp rebuke from voters in the key states of Bavaria and Hesse, with economic woes and immigration fears boosting the opposition conservatives and the far right.
Up to 250 trains will be needed to modernise all these lines, though the current government's fractious relationship with London Mayor Sadiq Khan makes that massive investment difficult to envisage in the short term.
But beyond the fractious rhetoric, the US president brought a deeper message on Wednesday that sought to unify the west rather than divide it. It was his most dark, insidious and sinister project of all.
While [US president Donald Trump] has been able to centralize significant power, allowing him wide scope for decisive action, Europe remains a comparatively fractious collection of nations more comfortable with incremental steps.
Derived words: fractiously
fractiousness
Translations: