Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Curmudgeon |
CurmudgeonNoun1. A crusty irascible cantankerous old person full of stubborn ideas. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "curmudgeon" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1832. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Literature | Curmudgeon (3 syl.). A grasping, miserly churl. Dr. Johnson gives the derivation of this word thus, "coeur mechant, unknown correspondent." Dr. Ash, in his dictionary, says, "coeur, unknown; merchant, correspondent," a blunder only paralleled by the schoolboy translation of the Greek, me genoito, by ?? (God) ??????? (forbid) (Luke xx. 6). Source: Brewer's Dictionary. |
Slang in 1811 | CURMUDGEON. A covetous old fellow, derived, according to some, from the French term coeur mechant. Source: 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Commonalty | Peasant, countryman, boor, carle, churl; villain, villein; terrae filius; serf, kern, tyke, tike, chuff, ryot, fellah; longshoreman; swain, clown, hind; clod, clodhopper; hobnail, yokel, bog-trotter, bumpkin; plowman, plowboy; rustic, hayseed, lunkhead, chaw-bacon, tiller of the soil; hewers of wood and drawers of water, groundling; gaffer, loon, put, cub, Tony Lumpkin, looby, rube, lout, underling; gamin; rough; pot-wallopper, slubberdegullion; vulgar fellow, low fellow; cad, curmudgeon. |
Difficulty | Crab; curmudgeon. |
Parsimony | Miser, churl, screw, skinflint, crib, codger, muckworm, scrimp, lickpenny, hunks, curmudgeon, Harpagon, harpy, extortioner, Jew, usurer; Hessian; pinch fist, pinch penny. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Curmudgeon |
| English words defined with "curmudgeon": Gnof. (references) |
| Etymologies containing "curmudgeon": Gnof. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Well, sir, now that we are rid of that loathsome curmudgeon, you may effect my emancipation (The Magnificent Seven; writing credit: Josef Anderson; Chris Black) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| "Curmudgeon" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Curmudgeon" is used about 8 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 100% | 8 | 124,375 |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
curmudgeon | 34 |
curmudgeon knitting | 6 |
curmudgeon portable | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "curmudgeon"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | koprrac (avaricious, cheese paring, churl, clam, close-fisted, curmudgeonly, grasping, griping, mean, mingy, miser, money grubber, money-grubbing, muckworm, narrow, near, rapacious, saving, screwy, scrimp, sharpener, skin, skinflint, stingy, tight-fisted, tightwad, turn-penny). (various references) | |
Bulgarian | скъперник (accumulator, churl, hunks, miser, muckworm, save-all, scrape-penny, screw), темерутин. (various references) | |
Czech | skrblík. (various references) | |
German | Geizhals (cheapskate, meanie, miser, scrooge, shylock, skinflint, tightwad). (various references) | |
Greek | στραβόξυλο (cross-grained person, martinet), μίζεροσ, αρπακτικόσ (grasping, predaceous, predacious, predatory, rapacious, raptorial, ravening, ravenous, ravishing, vulturous), αγροίκοσ (boorish, bounder, churl, clownish, lout, roughneck, rube, rude, rustic, scullion, yokel). (various references) | |
Hungarian | goromba fráter (chuff, cur, pig). (various references) | |
Italian | musone (sulky person), burbero (gruff, surly). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | urmudgeoncay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | indivíduo miserável, grosseiro (awkward, bearish, blanket, boorish, bumbling, caddish, churlish, cloddish, clownish, clumsy, coarse, coarse-grained, common, crass, crude, cub, curmudgeonly, earthy, gross, gruff, harsh, heavy-handed, hoggish, homely, ill-bred, ill-mannered, impolite, incondite, indelicate, inelaborate, joggly, lacerated, left-handed, lob, loutish, low-bred, lubberly, lumpish, piggish, ragged, ribald, rough, rude, rugged, scurrilous, surly, swinish, thick, uncivil, uncouth, uncultivated, unkind, unladylike, unmannerly, unparliamentary, untaught, vulgar, vulgarian, wooden). (various references) | |
Romanian | zgârcit (accumulator, avaricious, cheese paring, churlish, clenched, close, close-fisted, close-handed, costive, covetous, grasping, hunks, illiberal, iron-fisted, mean, miser, miserly, money grubber, muckworm, parsimonious, penny father, penny-wise, penurious, screw, skimpy, skin, skinflint, sparing, stingy, tight), harpagon (skinflint), bãdãran (bearish, boor, bumpkin, cad, churl, churlish, clown, hawbuck, hind, lout, oaf, peasant, rough, yokel). (various references) | |
Russian | скупец (clam, close liver, miser, nickel nurser, scrimper, skinflint, tightwad), скряга (cheapskate, clam, close file, flay-flint, hunks, miser, muckworm, nickel nurser, scrooge, skinflint, tightwad), грубиян (boor, butch, cad, chuff, churl, mucker, tike, twerp, tyke). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | mrzovoljac. (various references) | |
Spanish | cascarrabias (crank person, cross-patch, grouch, irritable, sorehead). (various references) | |
Swedish | snåljåp (piker, skinflint, tightwad), gnidare (miser, skinflint), bitvarg. (various references) | |
Turkish | cimri tip, aksi kimse. (various references) | |
Ukrainian | скупердя, скнара (chuff, churl, clam, codger, miser, nip-cheese, piker, save-all, scraper, skinflint). (various references) | |
Vietnamese | người keo kiết người thô lỗ. (various references) | |
Welsh | dyn.gaswr. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "curmudgeon": curmudgeonliness, curmudgeonlinesses, curmudgeonly, curmudgeons. (additional references) | |
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"Curmudgeon" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: carmudgeon, churmudgeon, crumudgeon, cumudgeon, curmedgeon, curmudeon, curmudgean, curmudgemon, curmudgen, curmudgeom, curmudgin, curmugeon, kurmudgeon. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "curmudgeon" (pronounced kermu"jun) |
| 4 | -u" j u n | bludgeon, dudgeon, gudgeon, trudgen. |
| 3 | -j u n | allergen, antigen, burgeon, carcinogen, collegian, contagion, dungeon, engine, estrogen, glycogen, halogen, hydrogen, imagine, legion, margin, neurosurgeon, nitrogen, origin, oxygen, pathogen, pigeon, plasminogen, region, religion, smidgen, sturgeon, surgeon, virgin. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "c-d-e-g-m-n-o-r-u-u" | |
-2 letters: corundum. | |
-3 letters: crunode, decorum, douceur, guerdon, mourned, uncured, undergo, unurged. | |
-4 letters: codger, conger, corned, cundum, drogue, enduro, gerund, gourde, ground, modern, monger, morgen, morgue, normed, nudger, regnum, rodmen, rogued, rouged, undoer. | |
-5 letters: coden, coder, comer, coned, conge, cored, cornu, coude, credo, crone, crude, cured, decor, degum, demon, demur, douce, drone, dunce, duroc, durum, enorm. | |
| Words containing the letters "c-d-e-g-m-n-o-r-u-u" | |
+1 letter: curmudgeons. | |
+2 letters: curmudgeonly. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Usage Frequency 6. Expressions: Internet 7. Translations: Modern 8. Derivations | 9. Rhymes 10. Anagrams 11. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
