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fractious

US/ˈfɹæk.ʃəs/
adjectiveC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,242 of 15,258leans written

Fractious means irritable and quick to quarrel. A fractious child, fractious relations, a fractious meeting.

It suits tired children and divided committees equally, and of a group it means one that cannot hold together. The word is built on fraction in the old sense of a breaking apart.

Definitions of fractious

  1. 1adjectivefractiousIrritable and quick to quarrel.C2

    “The children were tired and fractious after the long car journey.”

fractious is a quality.

Remember it

FRACTious → nothing but FRICTION

He is easy to set off, and every conversation with him ends in friction.

hooks ontofriction

Where it comes from

From fraction in the old sense of a breaking or discord, plus -ous.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *bʰreg-

  2. Middle English

    fraccioun

  3. English

    fraction

  4. English, today

    fractious

Built from

  • frangere · Latin — to break

From fraction + -ous. fraction comes from Middle English fraccioun. From Middle English fraccioun (“a breaking”), from Anglo-Norman -, Old French fraccion, from Medieval Latin fractio (“a fragment, portion”), from earlier Latin fractio (“a breaking, a breaking into pieces”), from fractus, past participle of frangere (“to break”) (whence English frangible), from Proto-Indo-European bʰreg- (English break). a doublet of frazione.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

fractious in the wild

  • After a fractious conflict in 1984, the community was reduced to a small fraction residing on their 300-acre (1.2 km2) property in Arlington, Washington.

    Love Family

  • ULIMO-K was relatively united under Kromah, in contrast to the fractious nature of the ULIMO-J.

    United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy

  • The UNO disbanded in the mid-1990s, after a very fractious rule during which little progress was made.

    National Opposition Union (Nicaragua, 1990)

  • Despite a wider array of parties - mainly a product from the fractious SLD merger - contesting the election, in several ways it beat 1986's lows in participation.

    1990 Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council election

  • The fractious pair are brought closer in their dialogues about Catholicism and Communism and learn to appreciate each other better, but also question their own beliefs.

    Monsignor Quixote (film)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the frangere family

fragilefraction

fractious — used about once every 20,553 pages · #13,242 · point at the bar for the others