Not tractable; difficult to manage or mold.

Roget 704: difficult, not easy, hard, tough; troublesome, toilsome, irksome; operose^†, laborious, onerous, arduous, Herculean, formidable; sooner said than done; more easily said than done, easier said than done.    difficult to deal with, hard to deal with; ill-conditioned, crabbed, crabby; not to be handled with kid gloves, not made with rose water.    awkward, unwieldy, unmanageable; intractable, stubborn etc. (obstinate) 606; perverse, refractory, plaguy^†, trying, thorny, rugged; knotted, knotty; invious^†; pathless, trackless; labyrinthine etc. (convoluted) 248; intricate, complicated etc. (tangled) 59; impracticable etc. (impossible) 471; not feasible etc. 470; desperate etc. (hopeless) 859.    embarrassing, perplexing etc. (uncertain) 475; delicate, ticklish, critical; beset with difficulties, full of difficulties, surrounded by difficulties, entangled by difficulties, encompassed with difficulties.    under a difficulty; in a box; in difficulty, in hot water, in the suds, in a cleft stick, in a fix, in the wrong box, in a scrape etc. n., in deep water, in a fine pickle; in extremis; between two stools, between Scylla and Charybdis; surrounded by shoals, surrounded by breakers, surrounded by quicksands; at cross purposes; not out of the wood.    reduced to straits; hard pressed, sorely pressed; run hard; pinched, put to it, straitened; hard up, hard put to it, hard set; put to one's shifts; puzzled, at a loss, etc. (uncertain) 475; at the end of one's tether, at the end of one's rope, at one's wit's end, at a nonplus, at a standstill; graveled, nonplused, nonplussed, stranded, aground; stuck fast, set fast; up a tree, at bay, aux abois [Fr.], driven into a corner, driven from pillar to post, driven to extremity, driven to one's wit's end, driven to the wall; au bout de son Latin; out of one's depth; thrown out.    accomplished with difficulty; hard-fought, hard-earned.    ... show more

Roget 901a: sullen, sulky; ill-tempered, ill-humored, ill-affected, ill-disposed; grouty [U.S.]; in an ill temper, in a bad temper, in a shocking temper, in an ill humor, in a bad humor, in a shocking humor; out of temper, out of humor; knaggy^†, torvous^†, crusty, crabbed; sour, sour as a crab; surly etc. (discourteous) 895.    moody; spleenish^†, spleenly^†; splenetic, cankered.    cross, crossgrained^†; perverse, wayward, humorsome^†; restiff^†, restive; cantankerous, intractable, exceptious^†, sinistrous^†, deaf to reason, unaccommodating, rusty, froward; cussed [U.S.].    dogged etc. (stubborn) 606.    grumpy, glum, grim, grum^†, morose, frumpish; in the sulks etc. n.; out of sorts; scowling, glowering, growling; grouchy.    peevish etc. (irascible) 901.    ... show more

Roget 606: obstinate, tenacious, stubborn, obdurate, casehardened; inflexible etc. (hard) 323; balky; immovable, unshakable, not to be moved; inert etc. 172; unchangeable etc. 150; inexorable etc. (determined) 604; mulish, obstinate as a mule, pig-headed.    dogged; sullen, sulky; unmoved, uninfluenced unaffected.    willful, self-willed, perverse; resty^†, restive, restiff^†; pervicacious^†, wayward, refractory, unruly; heady, headstrong; entete [Fr.]; contumacious; crossgrained^†.    arbitrary, dogmatic, positive, bigoted; prejudiced etc. 481; creed-bound; prepossessed, infatuated; stiff-backed, stiff necked, stiff hearted; hard-mouthed, hidebound; unyielding; impervious, impracticable, inpersuasible^†; unpersuadable; intractable, untractable^†; incorrigible, deaf to advice, impervious to reason; crotchety etc. 608.    ... show more