morose
/məˈroʊs/adjective
Gloomy, sullen, and ill-tempered
From Latin morosus (Peevish).
Lineage
The story
A Latin speaker might call someone morosus when their habits had turned into a tiresome insistence on having things just so: the word could mean fastidious, self-willed, or peevish. Its source, mos (genitive moris), meant a custom or habit—the same Latin family behind moral, where customs become standards of conduct. English recorded morose in the 1530s, and its meaning settled toward the sour, gloomy side of a difficult temperament. So a fussy person’s fixed habits and a gloomy person’s bad temper meet in one compact word. Morose is, in effect, what happens when a habit of having one’s own way darkens the whole room.
Modern usage
Sullen or resentfully silent; also used in a one-off entry meaning like Aaron Magill.
- Heard in
- informal usage