Fractious

 WORD OF THE DAY

fractious / adjective / FRAK-shus

Definition
1a: tending to be troublesome
1b: unruly
2: quarrelsome, irritable

Examples
"The game became fractious, heavy tackles flying in, players squaring up to each other. The hostility spread."
— Luke Edwards, The Daily Telegraph (London), 4 Apr. 2022

But their long fight for the vote, Taub said, can stand in for any of the great social movements in American history, all of which were also messy, fractious, imperfect — and unfinished.
— New York Times, 24 Mar. 2022

Did You Know?
The Latin verb frangere means "to break or shatter" and is related to a few common words, which is evident in their meanings.
Dishes that are fragile break easily. A person whose health is easily broken might be described as frail.
A fraction is one of the many pieces into which a whole can be broken.
But fraction also once meant "disharmony" or "discord"—that is, a "rupture in relations."
From this noun sense came the adjective fractious.