Cantankerosity

Sir, the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Keitt] made a speech, and if I may be allowed to coin a word, I will say it had more cantankerosity in it than any speech I ever heard on this floor.

“This is a case for phlebotomy.” / “I’ll phlebotomize you!” retorted Vie, irascibly. / “Worse and worse Strong indications of internal cantankerosity, requiring an immediate application of Croton oil and ipecacuanha, infused in an oyster stew, to be superseded by a nicotine fumigation.

The French philosophers call this transcendental, but a simpler and more befitting name is that of cantankerosity. […] A curious case of peculiar cantankerosity is related by Nordenskold in the account of one of his wonderful voyages. […] To have the means of prosperous wholesome life in hand, and to prefer the favourite diet that would certainly kill, is surely an instance of moral cantankerosity as much as the man who, according to Mr. Samuel Weller’s legend, ate the three shillingsworth of muffins and blew his brains out. […] I humbly think that this is a case of mental cantankerosity.

It is a sad and astounding fact to relate, but even in literary life we meet with instances of cantankerosity.

But we cannot disguise from ourselves that the actual course of events at the time was greatly influenced by Mr. Tayler’s “cantankerosity.”

The bald-headed snoozer who has been working the physic racket in this metropolis for some six weeks under the nom de syringe of Dr. Hanson has a bad case of cantankerosity of the disposition, and the disease does not appear to yield to any of his ordinary methods of malpractice.

My Lords and Gentlemen—I am over-joyed to find such an important assembly—It had been my intention to have delighted your ears with an elaborate dissertation upon things in general, and to have entered into an analytical enquiry into the cause of the General Cussedness and Cantankerosity of things from pre-historic times until the present year of Grace, or rather Disgrace.

Of the whimsical manifestations of our national spirit countless anecdotes make mention in the boastfulness and general cantankerosity of the American tourist.