short-tempered• During those months I became anxious, short-tempered and critical.• You become tense, short-tempered and irritable with other people.• His father was growing short-tempered as one interview after another proved to be fixed in some one else's favour.• He is too short-tempered, for one thing, and also capable of doubt, anxiety, weariness, fear.• When John was so short-tempered, it hardly seemed possible to conduct a civilised conversation.• Did they guess why she was so short-tempered of late?• He tends to be very short-tempered when he's hungry.• She found she was short-tempered with shop assistants, angry if something she had ordered failed to arrive on the appointeddate.