splenetic
/splɪˈnɛtɪk
/adjective
1Bad-tempered; spiteful: a splenetic rant...
- We are further told that Finkelstein's book ‘reads like a rant, with splenetic attacks on individuals, many of them survivors, and vast generalisations about the whole of world Jewry.’
- It's anyone's guess, then, why he leaves his instruments dormant for much of this show in favour of splenetic rants and ruthless aggression towards his increasingly miserable audience.
- Yet Tyerman's frustration can sometimes lead to splenetic rants.
Synonyms
bad-tempered, ill-tempered, ill-humoured, angry, wrathful, cross, peevish, petulant, pettish, irritable, irascible, cantankerous, choleric, dyspeptic, testy, tetchy, snappish, waspish, crotchety, crabby, crabbed, querulous, resentful, rancorous, bilious, sour, bitter, acid, liverish;
spiteful, malicious, ill-natured, hostile, acrimonious, malevolent, malignant, malign
informal bitchy
rare atrabilious, envenomed
2 archaic term for splenic.Manu's Spleen 3 offers a double manifestation of spleen: the hysteria of a splenetic biological condition and the hysteria of laughter.
Derivatives
splenetically
- Some of the more splenetically strident are positively screaming for someone to tell them on DPF's comments board, the identity of our next attacker.
- He's no fan of children, never bothering to moderate his splenetically obscene manner of speaking when they're around.
- In the scene of Jo's death, for example, it is Esther who recites the Lord's Prayer and John Jarndyce who splenetically explodes with the third-person narrator's rage.
Origin
Late Middle English (as a noun denoting a person with a diseased spleen): from late Latin spleneticus, from Greek splēn (see spleen).