0 often in a bad mood, unfriendly, and not polite: --
1 not wanting to please you or to be friendly: --
The clerks in this post office are sullen, surly, and inefficient.
He is losing the old cement of courtesy; he is becoming surly and irritable, and now we are building fiats and living like insects in them.
Alongside this we have a conspicuous decline in the health service, the homeless condemned to costly, yet sordid, bed and breakfast accommodation, and our teachers aggrieved, surly, and suspicious.
Surly that is the real danger facing the delivery of mail, regardless of where you set the upper limit, regardless of how you define the reserved sector!
Surly the practice of government by a host of regulations tends to leave out the one essential in government—indeed, its essential basis—which is the good will of the people.
Passengers would be shepherded by surly, unco-operative and uninformative staff into a collection of cattle trucks, and would not be delivered to their destination in anything remotely approaching their timetable.
There are two rather surly looking men with hats on with their thumbs down and two smiling young ladies with their thumbs up.
Their reaction is not only mixed but very surly.
We should welcome that fact and not be surly about it.