Angry

How to spell angry

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce angry

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does angry mean?

1. adjectiveFeeling or showing strong displeasure or rage.

Angry in a sentence

• The delayed refund left many customers angry with the airline.

• He wrote an angry email to the contractor about the unfinished work.

Where does angry come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Angry grew out of the noun anger, which English took from the Old Norse word angr, meaning 'grief, sorrow, or trouble'. In its earliest English use the sense leaned towards distress and affliction rather than rage, so to be 'angry' once meant to be troubled or vexed. The root is connected to a wider family of words about tightness and constriction, including the Latin angere 'to squeeze or choke' and the modern words anguish and anxiety, which captures the physical sense of being gripped by strong feeling. Over the Middle English period the meaning narrowed and hardened into the familiar idea of hot displeasure or rage. The spelling is mercifully regular: the noun anger simply takes the adjective ending -y, with the e dropping out before it.

How the word is built

• angr (from Old Norse angr: grief, trouble)
• -y (adjective-forming suffix)