He came home with his manners a good deal improved; he had lost his
surliness and brusqueness, and was rather pleasantly soft and smooth, now; he was furtively, and sometimes openly, ironical of speech, and given to gently touching people on the raw, but he did it with a good-natured semiconscious air that carried it off safely, and kept him from getting into trouble.
The newsmonger is of the number, but his manner is not quite hearty--there is something of
surliness in his compliments.
Tom no longer wondered at the habitual
surliness of his associates; nay, he found the placid, sunny temper, which had been the habitude of his life, broken in on, and sorely strained, by the inroads of the same thing.
She had been ashamed, before, merely of Billy's inhospitality, and
surliness, and unfairness.
'That,' returned the landlord, a little brought down from his dignity by the stranger's
surliness, 'is a Maypole story, and has been any time these four-and-twenty years.
Yes, but
surliness might have provoked a point-blank question.
Camp takes pains to refrain from onscreen violence during "Benji: Off the Leash!" Then again, there's no real need for explicit mayhem: Kendrick plays Hatchett with more than enough
surliness to suggest that, while the audience isn't looking, the dog-breeder truly is a mean SOB to his intimidated wife (Christy Summerhays) and son.
There were no suicide bombers; no alarms; not even any
surliness, by all accounts, from local Arabs towards persons holding passports that would have identified them as members of the `Axis of Good'.
WALLACE RONEY No Room For Argument (Stretch): I'm sure he's a very nice man really but, having witnessed him leave the stage prematurely during a Chick Corea concert, I have always nurtured this nagging suspicion that Wallace Roney has taken on Miles Davis's
surliness along with his trumpet style.
Forget the reputation for
surliness he may have built up.
Both actors are well served by Sternfeld's sharp ear for dialogue and his grasp of the awkward
surliness and reticence of youth.
I have often remarked that I would embrace any day the gooey insincerity of the Yanks ahead of the genuine
surliness of the Brits when it comes to service.
surliness - a disposition to exhibit uncontrolled anger; "his temper was well known to all his employees"