Source: Merriam-Webster.com

Querlous: complaining in a petulant or whining manner

I came across this word in the text “Reading Lucy” by Jennifer Lucy. It sort of caught me off guard in a way because I hadn’t seen any previous vocabulary. In the text it stated: “She also had a habit of footnoting words whose meanings Alfred might not know-like querulous-and providing definitions”. the sentence I found it in is interesting because this particular word was an example of something people would not generally know. I saw it as a question within a question. When I found the definition it didn’t really make much of a difference because it was not included for the purpose of getting a message across.