crabbedadj.

Etymology: originally < crab n.¹ + -ed suffix¹: compare dogged adj. and adv. The primary reference was to the crooked or wayward gait of the crustacean, and the contradictory, perverse, and fractious disposition which this expressed. Compare German krabbe crab, whence, according to Grimm, ‘because these animals are malicious and do not easily let go what they have seized, Low German ene lütje krabbe (a little crab) a little quarrelsome ill-conditioned man ( Bremen Wbch.)’; also in Saxony said of self-willed, refractory children. So East Frisian krabbe crab, transferred a cantankerous, cross-grained man (who is refractory and froward like a crab, sticking fast or going backwards, when he ought to advance); whence krabbîg contentious, cantankerous, fractious, cross-grained (Doornkaat Koolman). Literal senses of ‘cross-grained, crooked’, and ‘knotted, gnarled, un-smooth’, applied to sticks, trees, and the like, also appear; these re-act upon the sense in which the word is applied to persons and their dispositions. In later use there is association with the fruit, giving the notion of ‘sour-tempered, morose, peevish, harsh’.