Sarah Vine, a fan of In Our Time, accuses Melvyn Bragg of sounding like a ‘querrelous old uncle.’
This word does not appear in the OED.
A Google search turned up an entry in the Urban Dictionary, where it is given as a word not defined yet under the entry for ‘argue the toss.’
The Word spellchecker suggests using querulous instead.
It turns up in a biography of Theodore Roosevelt by Henry Fowles Pringle, so perhaps it is one of those pesky Americanisms.
But Google books also leads to an article in Volume 3 of Brain Vickers’ William Shakespeare: the Critical Heritage, in which an C18th author opined that: … it is in my opinion no small affront to the world to pester it with our private & insignificant animosities, & to stuff a book with querrelous jargon where information is paid for & justly expected
Hear, hear. Couldn’t agree more
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