Churlish means rude and bad-tempered, especially when someone is being ungrateful or unfriendly for no good reason. A churlish person responds to kindness with grumpiness, acts stingy when they could be generous, or treats others coldly when warmth would be easy.

Imagine your grandmother bakes your favorite cookies and brings them to your soccer game. A churlish response would be to grunt “okay” without looking up from your phone. Or picture a classmate who refuses to share supplies even though you've shared with them many times before, not because they need everything themselves, but just because they don't feel like being helpful.

The word has an old-fashioned quality to it. Today, calling behavior churlish is a sophisticated way of saying someone is being unnecessarily mean or graceless.

When someone acts churlish, they're being disagreeable, almost as if they've decided that being pleasant requires too much effort. It's surliness with a dash of pettiness mixed in.