a. and sb. [See SORE a.1 9.]
A. adj. Irritable or out of temper ‘like a bear with a sore head’; discontented, dissatisfied.
1862. Major Jack Downing, vii. (1867), 61. [He] sed it done very well for some sore-hed Dimmycrat.
1902. Academy, 22 March, 291/1. This is sore-head philosophy.
B. sb. U.S. political slang. A dissatisfied or disappointed politician.
1862. Rocky Mountain News (Denver), 16 Oct. (Thornton). What will the ‘soreheads’ say now?
1878. N. Amer. Rev., CXXVI. 402. Each led by a little faction of sore-heads, desperate and reckless.
1888. Bryce, Amer. Commw., III. lxiii. II. 458. Some discontented magnate objects and threatens to withdraw…. If such a ‘sore-head’ persists, a schism may follow.
So Sore-headed a., = SORE-HEAD a.; hence Soreheadedly adv., Soreheadedness.
1844. Hood, Tale of Temper, 53. No bear, *sore-headed, could be more cantankerous.
1888. Pall Mall Gaz., 19 Dec., 2/1. The men are dissatisfied and ‘sore-headed.’ Ibid. (1883), 8 Jan., 3/2. *Soreheadedly punctilious about the proper respect paid them.
1885. W. Cory, Lett. & Jrnls. (1897), 515. The gossip and the pecking and the *sore-headedness of country towns.
