sulks


Also found in: Thesaurus, Idioms.
Related to sulks: defiant

sulk

 (sŭlk)
intr.v. sulked, sulk·ing, sulks
To be sullenly aloof or withdrawn, as in silent resentment or protest.
n.
A mood or display of sullen aloofness or withdrawal: stayed home in a sulk; a case of the sulks.

[Back-formation from sulky.]
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
References in classic literature ?
I believe the silly fellows must have thought they would break their shins over treasure as soon as they were landed, for they all came out of their sulks in a moment and gave a cheer that started the echo in a far- away hill and sent the birds once more flying and squalling round the anchorage.
I thought to myself, "She will consider her first attempt at taking a lesson in English something of a failure;" and I wondered whether she had departed in the sulks, or whether stupidity had induced her to take my words too literally, or, finally, whether my irritable tone had wounded her feelings.
It's lucky for you that I am not so easily put out as some of them would be by your deaf-and-dumb sulks. I am fond of you.
Didn't say dat t'all, said Fleece, again in the sulks. You said up there, didn't you, and now look yourself, and see where your tongs are pointing.
At this point, Joe greatly augmented my curiosity by taking the utmost pains to open his mouth very wide, and to put it into the form of a word that looked to me like "sulks." Therefore, I naturally pointed to Mrs.
In the sun-time, when the world is bounding forward full of life, we cannot stay to sigh and sulk. The roar of the working day drowns the voices of the elfin sprites that are ever singing their low-toned miserere in our ears.
I'd sooner you'd tell me to my face as you make light of me, than try to make out as everybody's in the right but me, and come to your breakfast in the morning, as I've hardly slept an hour this night, and sulk at me as if I was the dirt under your feet."
It was doubtless that same sister who told me not to sulk when my mother lay thinking of him, but to try instead to get her to talk about him.
'Well, if you will be so bitter against me,' replied she, 'I can't help it; but I'm not going to sulk for anybody.'
She sulked, then returned to coax once more, and sulked again, until, by the end of the evening, she was forced to be content with having impressed upon her father's mind both her love for Luigi and the idea of an approaching marriage.
I retired to the smoking-room, to smoke and read in a corner, and to watch von Heumann, who very soon came to drink beer and to sulk in another.
Then he would withdraw growling viciously, backing away with grinning jaws distended, to sulk for an hour or so.