# crabbed

Pronunciation: US say "KRAB-id" /ˈkɹæbɪd/; UK

## Adjective

1. Ill-natured and irritable; given to grumbling and hard to get along with.
   - Simple: Easily annoyed and unfriendly, often grumpy and quick to complain.
   - _His crabbed manner discouraged anyone from approaching his desk._
   - _The crabbed landlord refused every reasonable request the tenants made._
2. Cramped and crowded together, so that the writing is difficult to make out.
   - Simple: Written in small, tight letters that are crowded together and hard to read.
   - _The clerk's crabbed script crowded a year's accounts onto a single page._
   - _Scholars struggled with the crabbed marginalia in the medieval manuscript._
3. Cramped and bent out of a straight or natural shape.
   - Simple: Bent and twisted into a tight, awkward shape.
   - _The crabbed branches of the orchard twisted toward the ground._
   - _Years of arthritis left her hands crabbed and stiff._
5. Of an aircraft on approach or landing, turned at an angle to the runway so as to counter a crosswind.
   - Simple: Aimed at a slight angle to the runway to push back against a side wind during landing.
   - _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._
6. Carried out with the aircraft angled to the runway to compensate for a crosswind.
   - Simple: Done with the plane angled into a side wind so it stays lined up with the runway.
   - _The instructor demonstrated a crabbed landing in heavy crosswinds._
   - _A crabbed approach is standard procedure when the wind blows across the runway._

## Verb

4. Simple past and past participle of crab. — simple past and past participle of crab
   - Simple: Simple past and past participle of crab. Use this form when the action already happened.
   - _The passengers crabbed loudly about the delayed departure._
   - _Critics crabbed endlessly about the film's slow pacing._

## Origin

From Middle English crabbed, equivalent to crab plus the suffix -ed.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/crabbed (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).