crabbed

1. 1
   adjective

   Ill-natured and irritable; given to grumbling and hard to get along with.

   His crabbed manner discouraged anyone from approaching his desk.

   The crabbed landlord refused every reasonable request the tenants made.

   Similarirritable, cantankerous, grumpy, crotchety, surly

   Oppositegenial, amiable, affable, good-natured

   Note

   A word for temper, formed in Middle English from crab plus -ed. It pairs naturally with harshness: Shakespeare's The Tempest (1610–1611) sets a daughter 'ten times more gentle' against a father who is crabb'd and 'composed of harshness.' Use it for a lasting disposition, such as a crabbed old man or a crabbed manner. The verb crab, 'to complain,' names the grumbling; the adjective names the temperament behind it.

2. 2
   adjective

   Cramped and crowded together, so that the writing is difficult to make out.

   The clerk's crabbed script crowded a year's accounts onto a single page.

   Scholars struggled with the crabbed marginalia in the medieval manuscript.

   Similarcramped, illegible, indecipherable

   Oppositelegible, clear, neat

   Note

   Handwriting is what this one describes: script so cramped that the letters crowd into one another. It is the written counterpart of the bent, cramped shape. It pairs with hand, script and writing. It judges how hard the writing is to read, not how tidy it looks, so the word belongs to the reader's struggle to decipher a page.

3. 3
   adjective

   Cramped and bent out of a straight or natural shape.

   The crabbed branches of the orchard twisted toward the ground.

   Years of arthritis left her hands crabbed and stiff.

   Similargnarled, twisted, crooked, contorted

   Oppositestraight

   Note

   Here the bending is physical. Robert Southey's Winter (c. 1800) pictures Old Winter as 'a wrinkled crabbed man' with a beard as grey as the moss on an apple tree. The word suits shapes twisted by age or weather, such as old limbs and knotted branches. In a portrait of old age it shades easily into the sour temper, because the same figure can carry both.

4. 4
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of crab.

   The passengers crabbed loudly about the delayed departure.

   Critics crabbed endlessly about the film's slow pacing.

   Note

   One spelling does both jobs: 'they crabbed about the delay' is simple past, and 'they had crabbed all week' is past participle. The form can carry any of the verb's meanings: complaining, fishing for crabs, drifting sideways, or the US slang 'ruin.' As a participle it overlaps with the adjective, most clearly in an aircraft angled into the wind.

5. 5
   adjective

   Of an aircraft on approach or landing, turned at an angle to the runway so as to counter a crosswind.

   The jet remained crabbed into the crosswind until the final few feet.

   A crabbed nose let the airliner hold the centerline despite the strong side gusts.

   Note

   A pilot's word, from the verb crab, 'to move sideways' like a crab. The nose points partly into the crosswind so that the ground track stays on the runway centerline. The angle is normally removed with rudder just before touchdown. The B-52 is the exception: its fully steerable landing gear lets it land crabbed and stay crabbed through rollout without destroying its tires.

6. 6
   adjective

   Carried out with the aircraft angled to the runway to compensate for a crosswind.

   The instructor demonstrated a crabbed landing in heavy crosswinds.

   A crabbed approach is standard procedure when the wind blows across the runway.

   Note

   Where the aircraft sense describes the airplane, this one describes the maneuver: a crabbed approach, a crabbed landing. Its alternative is the sideslip, which uses crossed controls. An airplane that cannot be cross-controlled, like the Ercoupe, must make a crabbed approach instead. Pilots also speak of 'nonzero crab,' treating crab as an angle that can be measured.

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