The Ordinary Origins of “Ornery”

Words are funny things. We like to think we’ve got them all figured out, that our dictionaries somehow cement a word and its meaning into one unchangeable thing. But words are smarter than that. A word’s life is lived on the pens of poets and the tongues of common speakers, and no dictionary (or editor’s red pen) can end those lives (though the editors will insist on trying).

Take the word ornery, for example. This word, according to The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories, began life as a dialectical pronunciation of the word ordinary. It first meant, well, “ordinary.” Having an ornery neighbor was probably a pretty good thing. Ornery then took on the connotation of “common, mean, or low,” which is the meaning Mark Twain used when Huckleberry Finn described himself as “low-down and ornery.” That ornery neighbor might be a little less desirable now. Then ornery took another turn and acquired its current definition of “having an irritable disposition.” Now you need to stay on the good side of your ornery neighbor or he just might leave a dead squirrel in your mailbox.

That’s the official history of ornery to date, but I think there’s something else going on with this word. In formal writing, ornery means “irritable,” but in less formal contexts (i.e., common speech) it also seems to mean something like “prone to causing trouble.” So an ornery neighbor might dress a dead squirrel in a tutu and leave it in your mailbox just for kicks. I’ve heard quite a few people described as “ornery” (mostly boys I knew in elementary school), and very few of them were irritable; they were mostly just troublemakers. Of course, there is still the ornery, cantankerous old coot who will blow up your mailbox if you look at him wrong; he’s certainly irritable.

You could argue that ornery is merely being misused by people who don’t consult the dictionary before they open their mouths. Or you could take this as another interesting twist in the life of a word. I’m going with the interesting-twist theory.