crankyadj.

cranky (adj.)"cross-tempered, irritable," 1807, from crank (n.) + -y (2). The evolution would be from earlier senses of crank, such as "a twist or fanciful turn of speech" (1590s); "inaccessible hole or crevice" (1560s). Grose\\'s 1787 "Provincial Glossary" has "Cranky. Ailing sickly from the dutch crank, sick," and identifies it as a Northern word. Jamieson\\'s Scottish dictionary (1825) has crank in a secondary sense of "hard, difficult," as in crank word, "a word hard to be understood;" crank job, "a work attended with difficulty, or requiring ingenuity in the execution." Related: Crankily; crankiness. Ben. Dang it, don\\'t you spare him--A cross grain\\'d cranky toad as ever crawl\\'d. (etc.) [Richard Cumberland, "Lovers Resolutions," Act I, 1813]