From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Crusty \Crust"y\ (-[y^]), adjective
1. Having the nature of crust; pertaining to a hard covering; as, a crusty coat; a crusty surface or substance.
2. [Possibly a corruption of cursty. Cf. {Curst}, {Curstness}.] Having a hard exterior, or a short, rough manner, though kind at heart; snappish; peevish; surly.
Thou crusty batch of nature, what's the news? --Shak.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
adjective
1: having a hardened crust as a covering [syn: {crusted}, {encrusted}, {crustlike}]
2: brusque and surly and forbidding; "crusty remarks"; "a crusty old man"; "his curmudgeonly temper"; "gruff manner"; "a gruff reply" [syn: {curmudgeonly}, {gruff}, {ill-humored}, {ill-humoured}] [also: {crustiest}, {crustier}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
112 Moby Thesaurus words for "crusty": abrupt, aggressive, backed, barnyard, bearish, beastly, biggety, bitchy, bluff, blunt, brash, brief, brusque, calcified, callous, calloused, cankered, cantankerous, case-hardened, cavalier, cheeky, choleric, churlish, chutzpadik, coarse, cocky, contemptuous, crabbed, cranky, cross, cross-grained, crusted, crystallized, curt, cussed, derisive, dirty, disagreeable, disrespectful, dour, excitable, facy, feisty, filthy, flip, flippant, fossilized, foul, fractious, fresh, gally, granulated, gratuitous, gross, gruff, hardened, harsh, hornified, huffish, huffy, impertinent, impudent, incrusted, indurate, indurated, irascible, irritable, lapidified, malapert, mean, nervy, ornery, ossified, pert, perverse, petrified, rank, raunchy, reinforced, rigidified, rough, rude, sassy, saturnine, saucy, sclerotic, set, severe, sharp, short, smart, smart-alecky, smart-ass, snappish, snippety, snippy, solidified, spiteful, spleeny, splenetic, steeled, stiffened, strengthened, surly, testy, toughened, truculent, ugly, uncalled-for, vitrified, waspish, wise-ass
Define.com is a registered nonprofit corporation dedicated solely to the global public interest and the advancement of humanity. It belongs to all of us who have a desire to promote electronic democracy, science, creativity, imagination, reason, critical thinking, peace, race and gender equality, civil rights, equal access to education, personal liberty, free speech, animal rights, compassionate and nonviolent parenting, social and economic justice, global monetary reform, Secular Humanism, cognitive liberty and a permanent cessation of The War on Drugs.
Let's see what we can do if we put our heads together.
0