The word "termagant" is usable in written English and is well written.
It can be used to describe a quarrelsome or overbearing woman, often in a historical or literary context. Example: "The termagant in the story was known for her sharp tongue and fierce temper." Alternatives include "shrew" or "harpy."
Only his termagant wife and her friends call him "Basil .Gordon Brown this year scandalised Americans by referring to their president as "Barack"But shortly after "Fawlty Towers" finished its short run in 1975, that social code crumbled.
As Lady Macbeth, Samantha Spiro progresses forcefully from ambitious bundle-of-energy to hectoring termagant to imploded wreck but the tragic deterioration of her marriage is crudely signalled – as when a gesture of intimacy turns into an unconscious near-throttling of his spouse as Macbeth gets lost in the "Come, seeling night" speech.
The work depicts marriage as a state of savage and continuous warfare, in which the husband reveals himself to be basically fascistic, far removed from the civilized man he thinks he is, while his wife has become a bitter termagant.
"If you'll get her coat, I'll take her along right now," Farrell says to Miss Hannigan, the drunken termagant who runs the orphanage (the misdirected Katie Finneran, in unfortunate slaphappy form).
Finding no black cat on the island, Davey grabs the orange tabby that belongs to his sister Mairead Kerry Condonn) — an act of sibling revenge on the trigger-happy air-gun-toting teen-age termagant, who, in a previous scene, took potshots at him and his bike.
Of the many ghostly figures in this bright play — Jean, who declares, "I like to disappear"; Gordon's termagant mother, who sees it as her job "to mourn him until the day I die"; Dwight, an unnoticed second son — the Dead Man is the only bona-fide ghost.
Whether Rose is showing her erstwhile suitor Herbie (the appealing Boyd Gaines) some leg, plying a manager of the Orpheum Circuit with Chinese food, or tiptoeing upstage to shift the scenery while her kid act, starring Baby June, is in full swing, LuPone is a delusional whirlwind whose innate humor manages to humanize the toxic termagant.
This entails a trip to the Vanger estate in north Sweden, where the temperature is as chilly as the relations between the various Vangers, a mix of reclusive old Nazis and frightful termagants who don't want a journo rummaging in the family history.
And by casting Mr. Quinton, he has, of course, guaranteed that Idris Seabright will claw her nasty little way into the pantheon of eye-rolling, teeth-baring, zany Ludlamesque termagants.
Two termagants are quarrelling across a lane from tenement windows.
Women appeared only as occasional "gross counterparts" of these mythic men: the near-monstrous consorts of Davy Crockett in tall tales; the bumptious termagants (played by men) of blackface minstrelsy.
