ill nature

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ill nature

A disagreeable, irritable, or malevolent disposition.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Noun

ill nature - a disagreeable, irritable, or malevolent disposition

disposition, temperament - your usual mood; "he has a happy disposition"

crabbedness, crabbiness, crossness - a disposition to be ill-tempered

crankiness, crotchetiness, grumpiness, contrariness - a fussy and eccentric disposition

moroseness, sullenness, sourness, sulkiness - a sullen moody resentful disposition

pettishness, snappishness, surliness, biliousness, peevishness, irritability, temper - a disposition to exhibit uncontrolled anger; "his temper was well known to all his employees"

impatience - a dislike of anything that causes delay

shrewishness - a nature given to nagging or scolding

asperity, sharpness - harshness of manner

good nature - a cheerful, obliging disposition

References in classic literature ?

Her complexion was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong characters of pride and ill nature. She was not a woman of many words; for, unlike people in general, she proportioned them to the number of her ideas; and of the few syllables that did escape her, not one fell to the share of Miss Dashwood, whom she eyed with the spirited determination of disliking her at all events.

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I like to look at statues, however, and I like to look at pictures, also --even of monks looking up in sacred ecstacy, and monks looking down in meditation, and monks skirmishing for something to eat--and therefore I drop ill nature to thank the papal government for so jealously guarding and so industriously gathering up these things; and for permitting me, a stranger and not an entirely friendly one, to roam at will and unmolested among them, charging me nothing, and only requiring that I shall behave myself simply as well as I ought to behave in any other man's house.

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And ugliness and discord and inharmonious motion are nearly allied to ill words and ill nature, as grace and harmony are the twin sisters of goodness and virtue and bear their likeness.