Examples from literature

• Blunt, crabbed writing suggests obstinacy and a selfish love of power, without thought for the feelings of others. 
• Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text, Still there's the comment. 
• Pray sit down, Mr. Newton—taking a chair as she spoke, while she read the small, crabbed, tremulous characters written on the page presented to her. 
• The ink is faded and brown, and the writing is often crabbed and difficult to read. 
• Then they were in the very middle of a crabbed pamphlet, in which Ivan's superior knowledge of German had been invaluable.