Is there a word to describe someone who tends to disagree with others only to upset them?

Question

What's the word to describe someone who acts arrogantly and always disagrees with others unreasonably in order to upset people around him/her?

[I'm not looking for adjectives like unpleasant, annoying, unfriendly, rude, I'm looking for a more specific term like opinionated, didactic, loquacious, gregarious ]

I think I'd come across it before but I've forgotten what it is..

I doubt that it's what you are looking for, but there's schadenfreude. There are also words like supercilious, contemptuous, combative, and so on. — coleopterist, Aug 22 '12 at 13:11
On the Internet, that's an essential part of the job description of a troll. — RegDwigнt, Aug 22 '12 at 13:14
There are cantankerous curmudgeons, antagonizing arses, disagreeable dolts who deliver diatribes. Not to mention bloviating blowhards, mean malcontents, foul faultfinders, ghastly grouches, killjoys, misanthropes, cranks and general complainers. Have you tried looking at a thesaurus? :) — Zairja, Aug 22 '12 at 13:19
I could list other synonyms, perhaps churlish or loutish. The person could also be acerbic, belligerent or acrimonious, pugnacious or rancorous. Again, I almost feel like this is general reference since at most we can offer lists of words from a thesaurus until you remember the "right" one on the tip of your tongue. :) — Zairja, Aug 22 '12 at 13:38
You may also want to look at the answers provided for this ELU question. — Zairja, Aug 22 '12 at 13:42
Related questions: http://english.stackexchange.com/q/61811/18655; http://english.stackexchange.com/q/39995/18655; http://english.stackexchange.com/q/70526/18655 — JLG, Aug 22 '12 at 13:46
sooo many great answers, we may need to make this community wiki — jhocking, Aug 22 '12 at 15:29
If you want to get into expletives, it sounds like you are talking about a d*ck or an a-hole. — user160917, Aug 22 '12 at 16:25
How long do we have to be held in suspense? Did Arch find the word? — Zairja, Aug 22 '12 at 17:10
Troll is the slang word. It's common on the internet to accuse people of "trolling" for exactly this behavior. Sometimes they say "don't feed the trolls" which means that you should ignore them so they will get bored and leave. — justin.m.chase, Aug 22 '12 at 19:58
I haven't seen an answer yet that meets these three requirements (if these are indeed intended?): (1) the person's behavior is motivated solely by malice, (2) the person is the aggressor/instigator and is not just passively grouchy or hard to please, and (3) the behavior is specifically rational disagreement (as opposed to, e.g., punching or leering at people). Perhaps (1) was not intended. I think "contentious" is close but not quite right. — Rachel, Aug 22 '12 at 20:52
I'd call that a stirrer (someone who "stirs the pot"), but maybe that's just in Australia. Note also that a stirrer isn't necessarily malicious - they just enjoy getting a reaction. — Simon MᶜKenzie, Aug 22 '12 at 21:30
Not the same thing but I feel it needs to mentioned in such a thread: *Devil's advocate*. Some people like to be the defender of the unpopular idea whether they support it or not and observers who don't realize what they're really doing often think they are just being contrarian. — hippietrail, Aug 22 '12 at 22:05
@coleopterist Schadenfreude was precisely the word I was thinking of. +1 — Moderat, Aug 22 '12 at 23:29
"Awkward" can be used though it needs to be in the right context to convey the required meaning, for example "I tried having a conversation with uncle Percy having quite forgotten what an awkward devil he can be". Compare this with "I was made to feel awkward", which would convey an unfortunate social situation. — Beetroot-Beetroot, Aug 23 '12 at 11:13

score 92 · Answer 1 · edited Sep 19 '14 at 02:37

92

A curmudgeon is someone who is bad-tempered and disagreeable - so curmudgeonly?

A contrarian is someone who takes an opposing view, especially for the sake of being difficult, contentious or in opposition to the generally held view. This could also be used as an adjective.

A troll is, in a certain context, someone who says something deliberately for the purpose of insulting or upsetting someone. (Thanks RegDwight AAA, and no offense intended to Norwegians).

My British friends and relatives might also say that such a person was "playing silly buggers" (or beggars).

edited Sep 19 '14 at 02:37

Daniel

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answered Aug 22 '12 at 13:23

Joel Brown

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+1 For troll. IMHO this is the best answer to emphasise that the disagreement is only to produce a reaction, not out of genuine belief. Its only problem is that its a pretty modern word, so older readers may not be familiar with it. – T.E.D. Aug 22 '12 at 14:35
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The question is tagged with [tag:adjectives], but you have given nouns. – tchrist Aug 22 '12 at 15:21
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More ususally 'silly buggers', isn't it? – Barrie England Aug 22 '12 at 15:49
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@tchrist Agreed, the question is tagged with adjectives, and the details specify adjectives, but the question title implies nouns. As you can see, while my answer emphasizes noun forms it also addresses the adjectival forms. – Joel Brown Aug 22 '12 at 17:53
Contrary to my tendency towards the contrarian - your answer is hard to contradict; +1. – alex gray Aug 23 '12 at 00:54
as Barrie England suggests.... "you're a silly bugger" but "he's playing silly buggers!" – Ken Aug 23 '12 at 04:31
Being a brit, I'd suggest that bugger may be substituted by beggar – David Kemp Aug 23 '12 at 10:49
All these words describe someone who routinely disagress but, do they necessarily imply that that person's motivation is to upset? – Jodrell Aug 23 '12 at 11:29
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@Jodrell Troll does. If your point is that the others proffered are inferior, I'd agree. – T.E.D. Aug 23 '12 at 15:14
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I wonder when/how the phenomenon of trolling actually got called trolling. A troll is a mythical creature that is often a clumsy, aggressive and large ugly monster. What does it have to do with saying things/assuming behaviour to upset people? – MarioDS Sep 16 '12 at 14:24
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I wish you'd made these separate answers, they are three quite different words. – Chris Sunami Jul 01 '15 at 00:30

score 71 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 22 '12 at 15:34

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I'd describe someone as antagonistic if they are the type of person that thrives on disagreement and conflict for its own sake. These are the type of people who will start arguments for the sole purpose of creating a tense, adversarial atmosphere.

answered Aug 22 '12 at 15:34

Zoot

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This one seems to fit best. It implies disagreement for the purpose of annoying others. +1 – Jon Hulka Aug 22 '12 at 22:41
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I'm not sure how this isn't the top answer--it's by far the best. While troll fits the bill exactly, you can't use it in formal language. – Ryan Amos Aug 23 '12 at 02:25
@JonHulka only if antagonising is synonomous with annoying but, I take your point. More relavently to the question, it is shares meaning with both upsetting and disagreeing so is a good match. – Jodrell Aug 23 '12 at 11:34

score 31 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 22 '12 at 14:25

31

I'll add 'argumentative' and 'confrontational', since those two haven't been mentioned yet. 'Argumentative' is pretty self-explanatory, being someone who delights in arguing, and similarly 'confrontational' is one who seeks out conflict (presumably because they enjoy it/ need it/ that's how they roll).

answered Aug 22 '12 at 14:25

Jesse M

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The first word I thought of is "argumentative", although I'm liking a lot of these other answers. – jhocking Aug 22 '12 at 15:28

score 26 · Answer 4 · edited Aug 22 '12 at 17:34

I don’t suppose the specific adjective you’re looking for happens to be querulous, is it?

Per the OED, it means:

Complaining, given to complaining, full of complaints, peevish.

Another possibility might be belligerent, which was originally from the Latin for war-making, but now more often means simply combative in a more general sense. There’s also bellicose, which may now carry additional connotations of loudness.

You can find synonyms to these at the links given above. Surely one of those must be your sought-after word. The merged set of suggestions provided by those two links is:

aggressive, antagonistic, ardent, argumentative, at loggerheads, battling, bearish, bellicose, bemoaning, cantankerous, captious, carping, censorious, combative, complaining, contentious, critical, cross, crying, deploring, discontented, dissatisfied, edgy, fault-finding, fierce, fighting, flip, fretful, grouchy, grousing, grumbling, grumbly, hard to please, have a bone to pick, have chip on shoulder, have it in for, hostile, hot, hot-tempered, huffy, irascible, irritable, lamenting, mean, militant, nasty, on the outs, ornery, out of sorts, peevish, petulant, plaintive, pugnacious, quarrelsome, scrappy, scrappy, snappy, sour, testy, thin-skinned touchy, truculent, uptight, wailing, warlike, waspish, waspy, whimpering, whining, whiny.

+1. Bellicose and Belligerent were my first two thoughts. – Marcus_33 Aug 22 '12 at 18:21 — Marcus_33, Aug 22 '12 at 18:21
The noun, querulant, was my first thought. +1 – Vegard Sep 07 '12 at 19:53 — Vegard, Sep 07 '12 at 19:53

score 26 · Answer 5 · edited Aug 24 '12 at 17:56

26

I'd say contentious.

from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/contentious

1 : likely to cause disagreement or argument

a contentious issue

2 : exhibiting an often perverse and wearisome tendency to quarrels and disputes

a man of a most contentious nature

edited Aug 24 '12 at 17:56

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

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answered Aug 22 '12 at 16:38

Jon Hulka

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I was thinking that, but the sources I’d found only allowed for a contentious issue. +1 for finding a better source. – J. C. Salomon Aug 22 '12 at 16:59
I didn't look too far - duckduckgo.com search - it is the first result. – Jon Hulka Aug 22 '12 at 22:43

score 19 · Answer 6 · edited Aug 22 '12 at 13:29

19

The word 'contrary' may be used to mean exactly what you describe, as in

'Oh, Arch, will you stop being so contrary all the time!'

I, for one, have heard that far too many times as a child.

There is also a poem 'Contrary Larry':

Larry, you are so contrary!
You make me upset.
If I say, "I am starving now",
you're not hungry yet.
If I would like some quiet time.
You go get your drum.
If all I have is candy bars,
all you want is gum.

Larry, you are so contrary!
You drive me insane.
If I say, "I love sunny days",
you say you love the rain.

edited Aug 22 '12 at 13:29

Kit Z. Fox

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answered Aug 22 '12 at 13:23

Nieszka

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This was my first thought, too. But "contrary" is generally used to refer to an annoying child. I wouldn't call a contrary child "arrogant", the word used in the question. So it may or may not be what the OP is looking for. – Jay Aug 22 '12 at 14:35

Zairja · Answer 7 · 2012-08-22T13:51:19.927

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If I may borrow an answer from a similar question here on ELU:

Quarrelsome might be appropriate. It describes someone "apt or disposed to quarrel in an often petty manner."

Another possibility is adversarial for someone who "contends with, opposes, or resists." For me, the word has the connotations of a contest or battle, perhaps even a sense of one-upmanship.

edited Aug 22 '12 at 13:51

answered Aug 22 '12 at 13:44

Zairja

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score 9 · Answer 8 · answered Aug 30 '12 at 13:12

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I would go with incendiary, inflammatory or perhaps even provocative.

answered Aug 30 '12 at 13:12

veredesmarald

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Rachel · Answer 9 · 2012-08-22T22:23:22.373

Assuming that your intended meaning includes that

the person's behavior is motivated by malice,
the person is the aggressor/instigator and is not just passively grouchy, and
their behavior is specifically rational disagreement (as opposed to, e.g., punching or leering at people),

the best words that I can find are invective, vitriolic, or taunting. The problem is that I am not sure how familiar it would sound to use these to describe a person. They are more often applied to language or comments. I think that the meaning of "an invective person" would be clear in context but not necessarily immediately or smoothly so.

You might have to go with a multiword phrase, such as "maliciously argumentative" or "always spouting baseless invective". I think that troll is also a good choice but problematic in that I think it is still more strongly associated with behavior on the internet rather than in meatspace and perhaps would suggest this more specific interpretation.

Invective is typically used as a noun, referring to critical or obscene language. — Ryan Atallah, Aug 28 '12 at 18:39

score 4 · Answer 10 · answered Aug 22 '12 at 16:32

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I like using belligerent for this purpose:

bel·lig·er·ent/bəˈlijərənt/ Adjective:
Hostile and aggressive. Noun:
A nation or person engaged in war or conflict, as recognized by international law. Synonyms:
warring - militant - bellicose

answered Aug 22 '12 at 16:32

bUKaneer

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This seems to me like one of the terms OP is specifically not looking for: it's certainly possible to disagree without being belligerent, no matter what the purpose). – Tim Lymington Sep 16 '12 at 22:04
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Where are those citations from? Please tell us the name of where you got those from, and if applicable, also a link. If you are going copy out text verbatim, our Help Center says that you must name where you got the original from, and this post fails to do that. Please see the question on meta entitled “What to do about missing source attributions: Copying, Linking, Attributions, and Plagiarism for discussion on this. – tchrist Jul 07 '14 at 22:34

score 4 · Answer 11 · answered Aug 24 '12 at 18:09

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I don't believe this question would be complete without mention of the term shit-stirrer.

answered Aug 24 '12 at 18:09

chaos

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You don't even have to stir. Just put a turd in the punch bowl or a Snickers bar in the pool. – Jules Bartow Aug 03 '22 at 14:47

score 3 · Answer 12 · answered Aug 22 '12 at 18:05

When confronted with someone who was contrarian just to be annoying, or even willfully ignoring the arguments presented by changing definitions on the fly or overemphasizing trivialities, I've often used the term gadfly. This comes from a story Plato wrote about Socrates. In the more charitable scenario, the gadfly is someone who irritates the established order by posing inconvenient or novel questions, but it seemed to be overloaded in practice to include people who were merely irritating because they were arguing from willful ignorance.

score 3 · Answer 13 · answered Aug 24 '12 at 06:19

3

I'd call someone like that an Advocatus Diaboli or Devil's Advocate.

From Wikipedia:

In common parlance, a devil's advocate is someone who, given a certain argument, takes a position he or she does not necessarily agree with, for the sake of argument.

answered Aug 24 '12 at 06:19

Urs Reupke

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Downvoters, I'd love to improve the answer so it meets your standards of usefulness. Please leave a comment. – Urs Reupke Sep 01 '12 at 06:13
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I think the downvotes are due to the fact that the question asks for a word describing one who disagrees for the sole purpose of upsetting other parties. Someone playing Devil's Advocate doesn't necessarily have only that goal in mind. – Jul 08 '13 at 18:00

score 2 · Answer 14 · edited Aug 22 '12 at 18:18

2

Provocative? On the other hand, it is possible that this word carries this connotation more in the British usage.

edited Aug 22 '12 at 18:18

RegDwigнt

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answered Aug 22 '12 at 17:03

MCW

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score 2 · Answer 15 · answered Aug 22 '12 at 17:25

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May I humbly suggest the colloquial: Jackass

answered Aug 22 '12 at 17:25

Nohl

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score 2 · Answer 16 · answered Aug 23 '12 at 14:42

Why not disagreeable? This word implies that the one who is disagreeable is so because they have reason(s) to disagree other than a fundamental difference of opinion or philosophy - it implies they are disagreeable for the sake of disagreeing - there is a negative connotation, with undertones of malcontent.

Souta · Answer 17 · 2014-07-08T22:57:45.107

Taking a stab at answering... The first word that came to my mind when reading your question was: bigot, bigoted. All definitions were yanked from the Oxford Dictionaries website (the links will lead you to their appropriate definition on the Oxford Dictionaries webiste.).
_{*Note: No online dictionary is superior to another and no dictionary can claim the rights to words. Other dictionaries (like Merriam-Webster OnLine, Collins Online Dictionary, Dictionary.com, Cambridge Dictionaries Online, etc.) are just as good and there are plenty of others on the internet that would say pretty much the same definitions. I wouldn't have been able to make this list, by the way, without the help of Google, which got me to this Wikipedia article.}

bigoted definition:

adjective: having or revealing an obstinate belief in the superiority of one’s own opinions and a prejudiced intolerance of the opinions of others

likewise, bigot definition:

noun: a person who is bigoted

bigotry definition:

noun: bigoted attitudes; intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself

score 0 · Answer 18 · answered Jun 30 '15 at 10:47

0

For a noun form of provocative, the English language has incorporated the French word:

Provocateur

Noun, French

a person who provokes trouble, causes dissension, or the like; agitator.

Is there a word to describe someone who tends to disagree with others only to upset them?

19 Answers19

Provocateur

Linked

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