Do you know any, um, how shall we say, difficult people? Yeah, me, too. Here’s a great list of challenging SAT words that all mean, roughly, “hard to get along with.” The subtle differences in meaning, for the philologists out there, follow below. For most folks, especially SAT takers, just knowing that all these words describe people who are, for one reason or another, cranky, hostile, aggressive, difficult, and just plain hard to get along with.
belligerent (“belli” = “war,” as in antebellum) – hostile bellicose – warlike recalcitrant – stubborn and uncooperative intractable – stubborn and unruly truculent – aggressively defiant fractious – irritable and quarrelsome irascible – easily angered obstreperous – difficult to manage petulant – childishly bad-tempered peevish – easily irritated cantankerous – bad-tempered, argumentative contentious – argumentative pugnacious – inclined to fight
Here’s a great rap by Josh Wagner to help you remember all these “Hard to Get Along with” words:
Click here to download the CPE Hard to Get Along with Rap by Josh Wagner
Lyrics to the rap:
Belligerent- I’m hostile like Jeffrey Dahmer
Are you feeling somber? That’s cuz I spiked your Arnold Palmer
Check your heart with a with a stethoscope I’m constantly feeling Bellicose
pick up my gear and run into fear like a world war 2 bomber
I’m a Communism stopper, pugnacious, like the Soviets
Ready to go at it – stack my back with first aid kits
I’m easily angered, irascible- when im mad im intractable
I’m stubborn and unruly, don’t dodge me im impassable
Obstreperous SAT words got me boiling over
Like a pan on high temperature, petulant, bad-tempered
Do you remember first grade when I was uncooperative
I would run around recalcitrant, eating all the dryer lint
I’m aggressively defiant, like a truck I must be truculent
Cuz when a truck is changing lanes you cant be fighting to keep your placement
To my amazement, here’s another word that means I wanna fight
Fractious, oh and I’m contentious, I’m always right